intelligence is an interesting subject to me, human, dog, horse, whatever. Good points Karlin. I see this with humans all the time, i work with lots of kids and many of them are tested for intelligence (among other things) and it's interesting the way some kids who i consider quite bright and deft in their use of language in particular, score low and very low on those intelligence tests. It seems to be a cultural bias--the language skills some of these kids have are nonstandard vocabularies and even logics. And then, in addition to variations in cultural intelligence, and inability to compare apples and oranges across cultures (though culture free tests exist but are they really valid?) there are different kinds of intelligence in another sense, which often comes to my mind in thinking about dogs. There is cognitive intelligence, there's mathmatical intelligence, there's verbal intelligence, there's social intelligence, and there's what i would call emotional intelligence, which probably would come under social intelligence.
Like humans, dogs certainly vary in their degree of social intelligence. There is learned social intelligence and there is innate social intelligence. Some individuals are limited innately as to how socially adept they can become, regardless of how much trainiing they receive.
When i walk Zack on the retractable leash, i sometimes think about my previous dog, Frank, a mixture of various breeds with a fairly unique look, and how she never needed a leash in order to be safe when walking around, and i thought about how some dogs don't notice cars, or don't regard them as dangerous, but some, Frank for example, did understand a car to be dangerous, perhaps like a predator, something to stay away from, to give a wide birth to, just as humans know enough to do that after a certain age.
I was thinking about Zack and how he has come along in learning how to walk together with me, in the beginning, if he wasn't on a leash, he would run away and never come back, he had no concept of getting lost or of any danger. Or, of us being companions. Now, he walks along wiht me, either going far ahead (the extension of the leash, 26 feet) or lagging behind, but he has learned to come with me and to be aware of where i am, and to habitually accept coming with me and choosing to come with me, this wasn't there before. And for the most part, i could probably take the leash off and he would stick with me. But i have no doubt that if he saw a cat or a bird, he would take off and he would not have any sense of whether a car was coming, or if he did know it was coming, i am pretty sure he wouldn't try to avoid it, he wouldn't understand the danger of it. And he would generally give it little or no thought because he would be focused on that which he wanted to chase. So i can never let him off the leash in the city, even though we walk very late at night and only see maybe a couple of slow moving cars. I can never chance it because i understand Zack's thinking or lack of, about cars.
And iwas thinking about how Zack has a kind of intelligence, bred in i suppose,to focus intensely on things he feels he must chase. With Zack, when we play fetch at the dog park, i will often deliberately throw the ball into the bushes because i know he'll find it. He's so focused, he won't give up, even if other dogs are playing, he will ignore that, he is determined to find the ball. It's the same thing at home, in my living room, when we play fetch. The ball may go one direction and bounce and end up on the other side of the room, obscured, and he will start off looking in the original direction, but by process of elimination, he'll go through the whole living room until he finds the ball. I am really impressed by this. sometimes i think he'll never find it because of where it ended up, and i'll go on doing something else and forget about fetch, and a few minutes later, he'll come up to me with the ball in his mouth.
Frank loved to chase cats too, but unlike Zack, Frank took in the big picture. To Frank, there was more going on than just the cat. She remained aware of where i was, she was aware of where cars were, she was a big picture dog. Because she appears to have herding dog in her genes, i see this as a kind of intelligence needed by herding dogs, as opposed to hunting dogs like Zack. Herding dogs need to take in the big picture, and whatever they are focused on , they have to be aware of olther aspects of the environment at the same time, they are multitaskers. Zack is more of a hunter, with powerful hunting intelligence. He is able to focus so strongly on his 'prey,' that he can find things that other dogs might give up on or lose track of. Because of this focus, he is not safe around cars and traffic, while Frank was safe on busy streets, it was just part of her natural intelligence, she was never trained to be that way.
But Zack, unlike Frank, can sit and watch a TV show and "understand" it in a way, the symbolism on the two dimensional screen is meaningful to him, he can project the object in his mind that the information on the screen suggests. I think that is a kind of social intelligence, or maybe it's an ability to abstract, which will vary from one dog to another. It doesn't seem to be a breed dependent thing though.
As a human, i generally think of intelligence as related to language skills.
So when i see any dog who responds with understanding to human words and nonverbal gestures, i find myself saying "What a smart dog."