THE INTELLIGENCE OF POMERANIANS THROUGH THE “SCIENTIFIC” TOWEL TEST
According to a book called “The intelligence of Dogs” written by Stanley Coren, psychologist in the British University of Vancouver (Canada), there are three aspects in dogs’ intelligence:
- Instinctive intelligence: the innate skills, as for example, for shepherding or hunting.
- Adaptive intelligence: dog’s ability to solve problems on his own.
- Working intelligence and obedience: dog’s ability to learn from the human beings.
Keeping in mind this last kind of intelligence, Coren classified the different dogs’ breeds. The method consisted of sending requests of evaluation to the obedience competition’s judges of the American Kennel Club and Canadian Kennel Club, asking them to classify breeds according to their performance.
From 131 evaluated dogs breeds, our dear Pomeranian took 23rd position in the excellent working breeds, that’s to say, those breeds who understand new commands with between 5 and 15 repetitions, and that obey, at least, in 85% of the cases. Is it not bad, is it?
Just out of curiosity, according to the Coren’s Scale, the most intelligent breed would be Border Collie (it understands new commands with less than 5 repetitions and obey, at least, in 95% of the cases), and the less intelligent breed would be Afghan hound (it understands new commands with between 80 and 100 repetitions and obey, at least, in 25% of the cases).
Which credibility could be given nowadays to this study that dates back to 90’s? As you could imagine, the result of this classification has aroused pros and cons comments.
We’ve wanted to test Colette for the “Towel Test” explained in the book to evaluate the second intelligence, the adaptive intelligence.
What does the “Towel test” consist of? First of all, you’ll need a towel, big enough to cover the dog completely up. Then, check your dog is awake and active. Next, you must let the dog smell the towel and later, you must throw it with a quick but soft movement under the head’s dog, in a way that its head and shoulders are totally covered up. The time that the dog takes to “get free” from the towel shows its level of intelligence (Lucky for us that the Coren’s Scale doesn’t calculate the level of intelligence of the owners who test their dogs… 😉 )
| 15 seconds or less | 5 points |
| From 15 to 30 seconds | 4 points |
| From 30 to 60 seconds | 3 points |
| From 1 to 2 minutes | 2 points |
| More than 2 minutes (help the dog to escape!) | 1 points |
Do you want to know Colette’s score? You can find it out in this funny video.
PomPomDog encourages you to do the “Towel test” to your Pomeranians (without shocking them, of course!) and to tell us the results in the comments of this post. You can even upload your videos on our Facebook page : )
