Your Dog May Be Smarter Than Your Kid

Just how smart are dogs, anyway? A lot of owners think they know exactly what's in their dog's mind, but there's been few studies to prove it until recently.

Leading researcher on dog behavior, Stanley Coren, says while dogs' thinking is a lot more simplified than that of humans, they are closer to us than we thought.

"It's absolutely vital we understand what's going on in their heads," said Coren.

Coren gave dogs language tests designed for toddlers and found humans have underestimated canines' intelligence.

"The average dog can understand about 165 words, signs and signals and has the mental capacity approximately equal to a two-year-old human child. Dogs really are on the scale of human beings, but they are really primitive human beings," said Coren.

The dogs in the Houston Canine Frisbee Disc Club can, at times, be mistaken for little humans in fur coats.

"Sometimes you forget that they're dogs," said Denise Carpenter, the owner of several disc dogs.

"She minds better than my kid does sometimes," said Eugene Hensley, the owner of a Border Collie named Wendy.

Dogs can follow a pointed finger, which may seem easy, but they're actually the only known species in the animal kingdom that can do it.

"You have to educate the dog's mind to see what its overall capacity is," said Coren.

Melissa Chan, an animal behavior specialist at the Houston SPCA, says dogs will recognize a lot of what humans say, but it's just as important for us to understand what dogs are saying.

"It's train or be trained," said Chan.

Dogs communicate non-verbally using their eyes, ears, mouth and tail. Chan says there are a lot of things people miss when they try to understand what their dog is telling them.

"For example, a dog can lick his lips and it can be part of a greeting behavior package, but if he closes his mouth and licks his lips and gets tense it can be a distance increasing behavior package," said Coren.

Researchers hope finding out how dogs think will improve ways to train them and cut down on the number of dog bites and aggression cases.

"If we could understand them before the dogs became biters or before they became obsessive barkers, maybe we wouldn't have to put down as many dogs as we do," said Carpenter.

-- Learn More About Canine Intelligence: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/200907/canine-intelligence-breed-does-matter