10 Smartest Dog Breeds? Since when?

According to the Yahoo home page today. Yahoo linked to Divine Caroline.

1. Border Collie
2. Poodle
3. German Shepherd
4. Golden Retriever
5. Doberman Pinscher
6. Shetland Sheepdog
7. Labrador Retriever
8. Papillon
9. Rottweiler
10. Australian Cattle Dog

Ms. X finds the whole concept suspicious. This site, Divine Caroline gives absolutely no information about the criteria used to identify these 'intelligent' breeds, and it suspiciously finds the smartest breed to be the Border Collie. The poster, PetMD, says they came up with the list.

We’ve gathered a wide sample of dog breeds, sharpened their No. 2 pencils (you know, no opposable thumbs), and asked them to fill out a simple intelligence questionnaire.

Okay, maybe not.

But PetMD did come up a list of the top ten smartest canine breeds in the world. See if your dog’s breed makes the grade.

Oh yeah?

Petrix.com has a comprehensive listing, but no source or date. It merely says "Based on a dog trainer's survey." It does reference Stanley Coren.

Stanley Coren's website has the list...

Excerpted from "The Intelligence of Dogs":

For example, over 200 professional dog obedience judges, ranked 110 dog breeds on the basis of their intelligence.

The Intelligence of Dogs is a book authored by Mr. Coren. It was copyright, get this, 1994.

Yahoo, picked it up for their front page just today.

Way to go, with the 15 year old news!

Back to the story. Mr. Corens' book is linked on Amazon, and you can read excerpts from it.

It looks like an interesting book, perhaps I'll have a chance to review it on the Gutendog Press one day. I should be able to get a used copy fairly cheap, seeing how old it is.

In the meantime, when this story "broke" about a year ago, FreeRepublic posters caught it and gave the list of top and bottom ten, complete with pictures.

Enjoy.