Why bassets are not stupid. By Bessie

I was thinking about human's interpretation of dog intelligence.  You see according to most people Basset Hounds are pretty stupid.  But my humans don't think we are.   Like last night for example, Carly walked into the lounge and every seat was taken.  So she starts jumping round the room, doing play bows and barking.  Lotty jumps off the settee to play fight with her and Carly jumps right up and steals her spot.  Now that's not the work of a stupid dog is it?   Once, Lotty wanted Mummy's spot in the bed and Mummy said no, she wasn't having it.  Lotty tried tugging the duvet off her but Mummy still wouldn't give up her spot.  So Lotty takes Mummy's clothes that were by the side of the bed and threw them all down the stairs.  So of course Mummy has to go and retrieve them.  When she got back a minute later Lotty was fast asleep (allegedly) on Mummy's pillow and had managed to make herself weigh ten stone.

Stanley Coren's book "The Intelligence of Dogs" rates Bassets #71 in the most intelligent breeds.    Really Mr Coren?   And on what criteria do you measure intelligence?   Working and obedience intelligence is the answer.  i.e. doing as you're told.   Now you tell me, which is more clever?   Blindly following instructions or thinking for yourself?   My Mummy considers herself a reasonably intelligent human but she never does as she's told unless she's stopped and thought about the consequences beforehand.   Same goes for us three houndies.

According to Mr Coren the most intelligent 10 were:
1.     Border Collie
2.     Poodle
3.     German Shepherd
4.     Golden Retriever
5.     Doberman
6.     Shetland Sheepdog
7.     Labrador
8.     Papillon
9.     Rottweiler
10.   Australian Cattle dog

and the 10 least intelligent were:
79:    Afghan Hound
78:    Basenji
77.    Bulldog
76:    Chow Chow
75:    Borzoi
74:    Bloodhound
73:    Pekingese
72:    Mastiff Beagle   (I don't even know what one of these is)
71:    Basset Hound
70:    Shih Tzu

Now, don't get me wrong, I know dogs of most of them breeds (except the ones I've never heard of) and I know some really nice border collies, Poodles and German Shepherds.  But if I was going on Who wants to be a millionaire, I might not pick one as my phone a friend.

So, say Mr Coren took one of each of these 79 breeds - presuming he can find a mastiff beagle, what with that being a made up breed and all that just stuck in there to make the basset even further down his dumb list - anyway, if he took one of each and lined us all up on a cliff edge and shouted "Jump!".    Us 70s would all be stood there peering over the edge at the broken and battered bodies of the 1-10s and asking ourselves why they didn't look to see what was down there.   OK, so they weren't broken and battered really.  I don't think Mr Coren would do that for the sake of an experiment.  Lets assume there was a massive cushion at the bottom.  But you wouldn't know that unless you looked over the edge first.  And the 1-10 didn't.  They just jumped because they were told to.

If you throw a stick for a border collie they will bring it back and wait for you to throw it again.    If you throw a stick for a basset they will lie down and have a nap while you fetch your own stick.   That's independent thought, not stupidity.

So there you have it.  The moral of that story is....what is the moral of that story?   Hmmm.  Disobedience doesn't always equal stupidity?  Maybe that dog is just thinking of the consequences.

And finally, I know some of them dogs at the top of the list have jobs and everything and you're probably thinking they must be really clever cos no basset ever had a job.   But HA!  No cos I met loads of stupid humans who have jobs.  And they get paid like real money and everything, they don't just do it for biscuits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intelligence_of_Dogs