Re:What a Border Collie Taught a Linguist About Language
by drakonka on Friday August 18, 2017 @01:17PM
(#15048002)
I felt like this with my Australian Cattle Dog/Australian Kelpie mix. It's like she could read my mind. I think that herding breeds tend to be especially intelligent and in-tune dogs - they would have to be, to work with their owner and often other dogs to manoeuvre sometimes very large herds of bigger animals in just the right way.
Re:What a Border Collie Taught a Linguist About Language
by conductr on Friday August 18, 2017 @01:46PM
(#15048231)
It's very much like mind reading. Or like a language you have with the dog. My theory on herding dog intelligence is because they are reliant on their vision and their brains need to be better at processing all that vision requires equates to smarter dogs. My BC was so reliant on his sight, I have several memories of him not being able to find a treat or something because he didn't see where it landed or it went under something. He knew he saw me throw it, so he'd get kind of frantic an look all over the place. Eventually, he would realize he had a nose and could smell around for it.
I think it's because they are so damn smart. It's the closest thing to having a human, except all the benefits of having a dog. My dog was insanely in-tune with my body language. I don't think I trained him very well but we naturally communicated very well. I could nod my head from across the dog park and he knew it was time to go home, stuff like that. If we were walking, I could glance my eyes in a certain direction and he knew to cross the street. (I usually didn't have him on a leash).
He made judgement calls. I would watch him do stuff he knew was wrong, and I refuse to believe it was an impulse. It was calculated. You could see it was conflicted but he seriously thought it through and concluded; eating raw chicken > ramifications. I could look in his eyes and _know_ what he was thinking.... Maybe that was all in my head but I don't think so.
That said, the key is having a very smart dog. It can exist outside of the BC breed but with BC's you have a high success rate of having an intelligent dog. We've had Labs too. Some similar to the BC, others good loving dogs but just dogs. We have a Yorkie now, she's an idiot.