We like to think that our dogs are the smartest, most adorable, friendliest creatures on Earth. But even the greatest doggo geniuses have dumb moments, and some canines seem like they’re born as giant floofy derps.
Twitter user Bum Chillups posted a story about the dumbest dog they ever owned and invited others to share their own tales. The thread got over 5.4k likes and was retweeted over 1.2k times. Which just goes to show that there are a lot of dumb (but loveable) dogs out there!
Scroll down for Bored Panda’s interview about canine intelligence with Clive Wynne, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University and author of Dog is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You.
15 reply
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6 hours ago
I gots to make sure you don’t drowns…
10 hours ago
Aw, what a sweet boy. :)))
Professor Wynne believes that there is no such thing as “dumb” dogs, only dogs with varying abilities and dogs that are more adept in different fields. “In general dogs (like people!) vary in their abilities along many dimensions. It isn’t fair to reduce all that to a single dimension of ‘intelligence.’ Different dogs are better and worse at different things.”
10 hours ago
i lol’ed so hard 😀
7 hours ago
Oh my gawd, cut his nails!
9 hours ago
This does not look like a proper place for letting a dog take a dump…
Certain dog breeds generally seem smarter than others. Back in 1994, psychologist Stanley Coren ranked over 100 dog breeds based on 3 different types of intelligence: instinctive, adaptive, and working/obedience.
Instinctive intelligence is pretty much easy to understand. If a dog does the tasks it was bred to perform well (like hunting or herding animals), then it’s considered to have high instinctive intelligence.
7 hours ago
“No nap can be denied” yes.
7 hours ago
He’s preparing to fight. He nap, and he bite
9 hours ago
What are you looking at? I meant to do that hooman!
Meanwhile, adaptive intelligence is a doggo’s ability to solve problems without help and to learn from its previous experiences. Finally, working (aka obedience) intelligence has everything to do with how quickly and easily a dog learns when its taught by us, humans.
However, Professor Wynne doesn’t agree with Coren’s insights and believes that dogs, just like people, are individuals with many different skills and aptitudes.
10 hours ago
Bless him.
10 hours ago
You call him dumb? He’s actually fucking clever, has trained you well!!
7 hours ago
😆
According to the professor, the differences between breeds are much less important than many people think. “Of course, there are certain behaviors that are quite characteristic of particular breeds—only heelers heel, only pointers point, only herders herd, and so on.”
7 hours ago
And he is winning.
7 hours ago (edited)
She knows what he did, and she’s not sorry for it.
9 hours ago
It’s a message for you to get her a friend.
Wynne continued: “But in the only two major studies looking at differences in behavior both between and within breeds it was found that the differences within breeds were at least as significant as those between breeds. That said, I have to acknowledge that all of the four or five dogs that have been found who understand more than a handful of human words have all been border collies!”
7 hours ago (edited)
I’d be scared if I saw a spider of that size!
10 hours ago
Yeah, fine, but what about the dog?
10 hours ago
And then he lol’d hard.
Meanwhile, Nicholas Dodman, former program director of the Animal Behavior Clinic at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, told Dogster that he had two dogs, one of which was hyperactive while the other was lazy, but this wasn’t indicative of their level of intelligence.
“You would say Jasper was not as smart as Rusty. But once you were out on a trail, Jasper lit up. He was doing the job that nature intended him to do because he was a coonhound, and he was using his super-intelligent nose. He was brilliant at his job, but not so good at some other things,” Dodman explained.
7 hours ago
Hey, at least it wasn’t raisin bran. (no offense to anyone who likes raisin bran)
10 hours ago (edited)
The 2-year old neighbour kid pooped on the floor during potty training, and the house dog in an act of solidarity ate it up. Not the kid. The poo.
10 hours ago
Automatic flush !!!! 😂
So before deciding whether or not a dog is smart or dumb, it’s important to keep in mind what they were bred for and what their strengths as individuals are. In other words, you can’t judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Different dog breeds excel at different tasks. And the upside is, when a dog isn’t good at something, it leads to plenty of hilarious canine moments.
Do you have any dumb dog moments to share with us, dear Readers? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
7 hours ago
You cannot hide the smells.
9 hours ago
I like him😁😁
10 hours ago
Aww, he wanted to be a unicorn.
10 hours ago
Not dumb, clever.
10 hours ago
the compulsive licking is often stress based OCD
4 hours ago
Aww look at his adorable eyes!
7 hours ago
I laughed out loud at this one.
5 hours ago
Don’t most dogs benefit from having some kind of an idea as to what you want from them?
10 hours ago
You’re welcome.
7 hours ago
Jolly Green Giant Dog!
9 hours ago
Never pull thread out their ass! It can get entangled and rip their insides out! Go to a vet instead.
8 hours ago
Pretty smart actually
10 hours ago
Go to the vet, he needs an eye-check.
5 hours ago
Dogs stealing passies isn’t all that unusual. Akin to other baby’s stealing another’s passie at daycare.
7 hours ago
But those eyes……
7 hours ago
It’s her revenge for naming her Nike. I mean, you name a dog after a shoe brand, what other hobby should she have? Adorable dog btw.
Note: this post originally had 82 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.