Like many dog owners, Raymond Meza, 51, has long thought his dog was especially smart. Turns out he was right.
A few months back, Meza, a retired deputy sheriff living in Utica, NY, signed up his 4-year-old English coonhound, Lilly, for a new online service called Dognition. Dog owners can test their pups’ intelligence via special games that then provide them — and Dognition’s research center — with information about their pet’s intelligence. According to Dognition, Lilly is a canine “Einstein,” one of nine profiles it assigns its doggy test subjects.
“Every dog is smart, but there are different types of intelligence,” explains Vanessa Woods, one of Dognition’s founders. Woods, a research scientist, launched the service this past March with her husband, Brian Hare, an associate professor in evolutionary anthropology and cognitive neuroscience at Duke University who founded the school’s Canine Cognition Center.
“What’s really cool is that people enter in this data and it builds on the knowledge we already have,” enthuses Woods, who is also the co-author, along with Hare, of the best-selling book “The Genius of Dogs,” which came out in paperback last month. “Dogs are actually one of the most important species we can study,” she says. “They are the most successful mammal on the planet besides us.”
Dognition users pay a $39 introductory fee, plus $9 a month or $60 a year, to sign up at dognition.com. The initial assessment lasts a total of 80 minutes, with 19 individual games that vary in length and measure a dog’s reasoning, communication, cunning, memory and empathy. In addition to Einsteins, dogs are classified as Stargazers, Aces, Charmers, Experts, Mavericks, Protodogs, Renaissance Dogs and Socialites. The most common classification is Protodog — roughly 18 percent of users fall into the category —while just 3 percent are Einsteins.
For Meza, it’s been worth the modest investment. “I’ve learned quite a bit, I never know what to expect with these games,” he says. In one game, he had to show Lilly a treat, then hide it under a cup while she watched. He then pointed to a different cup. Lilly remembered where the treat was hidden, supposedly proving that she is an independent thinker. “It gives you an understanding about how your individual dog’s mind tends to work and function,” Meza says.
Woods says that their goal is to be able to define cognitive differences down to a breed level, which she says hasn’t yet been done.
“People say that border collies are the smartest dogs, but they haven’t tested across all breeds,” she explains.
At least one border collie test subject isn’t an Einstein. Beamer, a 2-year-old border collie living in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, is a Socialite, according to Dognition.
“His empathy scores were off the charts, which means he’s very bonded with me,” explains Beamer’s owner, Joanne Sheffler, 67, who also used Dognition with her 5-year-old boxer, Flurry.
Flurry was also classified as a Socialite, though he didn’t respond exactly like Beamer did. For one test, the dogs had to sit and stay in the presence of food.
“Flurry stayed. Beamer ran and ate the food,” Sheffler recalls. “I wasn’t surprised because Flurry’s had a lot more training and Beamer’s a youngster.”
Sarah Izzo, 32, an event manager who lives in Prospect Park, was even less surprised by some of the Dognition results. She bought a 1-month subscription to use with her 4-year-old pit bullmix, Abbey, who was classified as a Socialite.
“We already knew our dog was motivated by food and is very bonded to us,” says Izzo, who notes that many of the games involved hiding treats under cups. “She looks to us for everything.”