The Smartest Dog Breeds

There are smart dogs and, bless his little furry heart, there was my dog. He was an absolutely adorable beagle mix who simply had no common sense and less survival instinct. He would happily make a mad dash after anything—kids who looked vaguely like my brother, pizza delivery guys, pigeons—so we kept him inside as best we could. Every time the screen door opened, though, he was right there trying to make a run for it. The thing about him, though, was that he was really easy to catch. All you had to do was step outside as he was running down the block and ask him if he wanted to go on a walk. He would instantly forego his independent walk and run back in a tizzy of excitement …to go on a walk. Not smart, but very loyal.

Now, canine intelligence is a bit hard to judge, but in his 1994 book, The Intelligence of Dogs, psychologist Stanley Coren, PhD, did his best. Coren, who now writes the Canine Corner column at Psychology Today, found that dogs have multiple kinds of intelligences, including instinctive, adaptive, working, and obedience intelligence, which stem from their natural history, evolutionary relationship to humans, and trainability. He then ranked 110 breeds by intelligence. He assessed their smarts by studying how quickly they understood new commands and how often they obeyed them the first time they heard it. Of course, it's not all breeding. According to Coren's work, 51% of a dog's intelligence stems from its genes, while 49% is based on its environment.

While there are no guarantees in this world, and dogs' intelligence varies, if you're looking for a dog who may fall a little higher on the doggy IQ charts these are the breeds that tend to be smarter, according to Coren's assessment, as reported by Science Alert.

These bright pups mastered new commands after fewer than five repetitions and obeyed first commands 95% of the time or more: