On Jul 30, 11:48*pm, Frogwatch wrote:
On Jul 30, 11:32*pm, "mgg" wrote:



"Wizard of Woodstock" wrote in messagenews:lcd475d20h8bh7bom2tcle1rau5qajpi9q@4ax .com...

On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:59:36 -0700 (PDT), Frogwatch
wrote:

However, anybody with a dog will realize their pet is capable of some
sort of reasoning and intelligence.

I wouldn't say some sort - I would say that dogs are fully capable of
reasoning and even the average dog has innate intelligence.

When these discussions come up, I always point to my buddy Duke Doggee
Dog who was a blind Border Collie. *He had a vocabulary of 350 plus
words, he understood complex sentences and even offer an opinion from
time-to-time. *:)

Proof of the pudding that dogs can reason and even rationalize was
Duke and one other dog I had in the service - a Belgian Shepard named
Major. *Duke was blind, but I didn't know it until he was five - I
happened to notice calcium deposits in his eyes and took him to the
top veterinary opthamologist at Tufts Vet School who tested him and
calmly asked me if I knew he was blind. :)

Major could even read body language, had a similar vocabulary to Duke
and had an uncanny ability to work off leash to a complex set of hand
commands.

Even average dogs have 200+ word vocabularies - it's just a difference
in levels of intelligence.

Just like in humans.

I have a 7 year old German Shephard Dog, and I PROMISE you he is more
intelligent than some in this group.

Seriously though, I talk to him in sentances, not commands. He understands
just fine. I just wish he could talk.

--Mike

I think I have always underappreciated dogs, too bad they stink.
Sometimes my son's dog amazes me with how smart she is, then she goes
in and eats cat poop outa the litter box.

I think animals communicate a lot with each other but not in the way
we communicate. We do it mostly verbally and do not see all the cues
they see. My impression is that a dog can get volumes of info from
the look on our faces and posture and even the way we smell. I think
they can even communicate interspecies like cat-dog and vice versa but
we simply do not see it because evolution has programmed us to be
verbal. Dogs are probably baffled by our inability to communicate.