Horizon: Can my dogs be as clever as Betsy?
The short answer is no.
The long answer is … kind of.
Betsy is a Border Collie. She knows over 340 words, and when shown a toy, can go and fetch an identical toy from another room. What really blew my mind was that she could look at a picture of a toy, and then go and fetch the real thing from another room. That’s just … wow. WOW.
Ignoring the niggling thought that my dogs would eat any peice of paper I handed them, I decided this was slightly beyond our current capabilites for the time being. All our dogs can differentiate between their toys based on names (ball, cageball, NakeySnakey, Sausages, Bone, Turkey, Chicken … my dogs have a lot of toys that look like food) so that seemd a bit too easy. So we focussed on the “fetch something that looks like what I’m holding” idea.
I left a selection of toys out on the floor, including all the favourites*. I then sat in the other room with counterparts, and one dog. (Two or three dogs gets competitive. It is hilarious to see the dogs doing handbrake turns around the corners and scrabbling on the floors, but not good for them.)
Dylan was up first. He happily sniffed the toy I had. He happily wagged his tail and happily looked at me, but made no attempt to happily fetch me a different toy. He didn’t understand, complete idiot, but very happy. Labelled him “Dismal Failure” and moved on.
Kim was much better. She understood pretty quickly that she had to go and fetch something from the other room to get the toy I had, which was more than Dylan. I showed her a big coiled snake toy (because we have a pair, a big one and a little one) and she bounced off and fetched me the little one immediately. The problem arose when I showed her the little blue cage ball. She couldn’t understand that the little blue cage ball was the same kind of toy as the big red cage ball. I think this provokes further experimentation, and will try again on another day, this time with a small blue cage ball and a big purple cage ball. Perhaps colour is important? The coiled snakes are the same colour, as are the other two toys she made associations with.
Mollie looked at the toy I had, and then sprinted off to fetch a toy and take it to her bed. She now has a basket full of toys and is having a whale of a time playing with all of them at once, completely ignoring me in the other room with my one lonely toy. Mollie either doesn’t understand and should get the “Dismal Failure” sticker, or she’s actually an evil genius … right now, it could go either way.
* Tennis balls had to be removed from the equation. All the dogs just kept fetching the tennis balls and then playing by themselves with the tennis balls if I didn’t intervene. I note Betsy didn’t have any tennis balls either.