The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think Paperback – October 29, 2013

This non-fiction book, co-written by Brian Hare (director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center at Duke University) and his wife, Vanessa Wood, an award-winning journalist and author, not only explains the ways in which dogs--even mutts from the shelter--are smart, but also why.Hare has the credentials and research to give credibility to his premise about dog intellect, but he makes it clear from the beginning that canines have a specific type of intelligence. It allows them to be successful in a world where they depend upon humans to survive. He calls canine cognition "dognition" and explains there are some areas dogs (even puppies) have abilities that justify the term "genius", while they perform average or even below average in others when tested.When the writing is anecdotal, it's fascinating. Hare traveled in Russia, Germany and Africa to study other species (such as Russian silver foxes bred to become friendly to humans and bonobos, apes that are similar to chimpanzees but much less aggressive) using what he learned in his research into the canine mind.While I was intrigued with reading about his research with dogs and what he learned, when he describes the myriad of tests and their results, Hare slips into "AcademicSpeak", which probably comes natural to a scientist who writes papers for scientific journals. (Here's where Woods' journalistic abilities could have injected the writing with a bit more verve--if one can make scientific tests seem exciting.) Certain jargon is used repetitively--in one five-line paragraph, I counted the word "cognitive" five times, a bit much for this reader since there are synonyms that could replace it occasionally.Still, the book is interesting enough to keep reading through the slightly (dare I say it?) drier sections to find out more about how the emotional bond dogs have with humans affects their ability to understand and communicate with us. They watch us and make inferences from their observations. (Ever notice that your dog drops the ball in front of you, not behind you? That's because your dog actually understands you'll see it if it's in front of you, not behind you, and--if he's lucky--toss it in a game with him.)It's obvious by the book's end that many of the theories about how dogs interact with humans and why are now obsolete, even those still in use by so-called "experts." Brian Hare convinced me his research into canine cognition (there's that word again) is ground-breaking and valid.Dog lovers feel that our pets are smart. Now we have access to the research that proves it. If you're a dog lover who would like to understand more about how your dog thinks and what he or she understands, I recommend this book to you. (Since reading it, I've personally recommended it to many other people.)

Although I grew up having dogs as pets, and always assuming my dogs were exceptionally smart, some years ago, I was amazed as my brother-in-law gave his dog an instruction on Thanksgiving day. The instruction was fairly involved, but the dog went and did it. So when I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about this book, having to do with "dognition" and the learning and personal relationships between dogs and humans, I bought it and read it. It goes beyond dog-human relationships, and includes insights into how humans also interact themselves. It is more technical a book than you might expect, and goes into quite a bit of detail, but it is an excellent book on how dogs and mankind have forged a bond that endures and grows deeper, largely through selective breeding, (not necessarily on the part of the humans) not through conditioning. It also provides insights into how dog "owners" can learn about their dogs' strengths, and how best to foster canine learning in their environment. It includes sections on conditioning/training, and the strengths and weaknesses of normal methods, and talks about how well dogs understand words that they hear. Quite fascinating, especially the parts on how dogs learn words and names of objects, and how they can use what they have learned to learn new names and group associations. I recommend this excellent book to anyone with a curiosity of how the world around them works, and how "dumb animals" aren't really dumb at all.

In addition to illuminating a fascinating area of scientific research - the co-evolution of dogs and humans - this book adds important understanding to dog training. All dog trainers should read it.Brian Hare explains the major shortcomings of both of the two leading models of dog training: "leader-of-the-pack" (dominance training), and "operant conditioning" (mislabeled as clicker training). He points out that dominance training is based on scientifically inaccurate assumptions about how dogs relate to humans; while operant conditioning intentionally ignores dog's unique cognitive processes (ways of thinking).Dogs evolved from wolves by refocusing their social skills and affection towards humans, Hare explains. For example, they can learn hundreds of human words using many of the same mental processes that a human infant does. And can learn by copying humans and inferring communication signals from human gestures such as pointing. Operant conditioning does not accommodate these capacities, so it misses a major opportunity to train from dog's strengths.A major take-home training lesson for me from this book was Hare's point that, as social animals, dogs are not very good at trial-and-error learning. They do much better when shown a technique through social interaction. This runs counter to a major tenet of operant conditioning: let the animal flounder around until, by chance, it discovers the desired behavior. This is called 'shaping' in the operant conditioning lingo, and Hare convincingly explodes this tenet. Gurus of operant conditioning advise that you wait around until your dog hits on the right behavior, then 'shape' that with a reward through stepwise trials-and-errors towards the desired behavior. It is a tedious procedure, frustrating for both dog and owner. And lacks any scientific foundation. It appears to have been co-opted from rat (BF Skinner) and dolphin (Karen Pryor) training, where it is not practical to actually show the animal the desired behavior, so trial-and-error is the only option. Trial-and-error may be fine and the only alternative for rats and dolphins, but why design a dog training program around one of dog's weaknesses? Much better to train to their strengths - their ability to learn from others, especially their humans. Social learning: dogs are brilliant at it, Hare explains, with solid science behind him.And what about dog's inherent cognitive weaknesses? Rather than pound your head against a wall and drive yourself and your dog into chronic anxiety, Hare asks that we recognize that such weaknesses actually do exist and are inherent, and when training doesn't work it actually may not be your fault, contrary to what many operant trainers insist. Thank you Brian Hare from freeing us from the guilt-tripping that has unfortunately become inscribed into operant conditioning as evangelized by leading dog trainers.The book is well worth the purchase price just for this single, valuable insight. Train to your dog's strengths, find other ways to manage their untrainable weaknesses. Hare gives the example of incessant barking - training may not solve hormonally-based behaviors like this. Better look to medical alternatives such as castration. Similarly for many dog 'problems', training may not be able to overcome biology. Aggression, leash-pulling, hunting... don't just assume you're a bad trainer. Instead, understand your dog's cognitive profile (Hare offers an online test for that). Will the future bring gene and hormone therapy for dogs? It could save their lives.There are also some shortcomings in the book that limited it to four rather than five stars for me:In explaining dog evolution, Hare asserts that only dogs and bears survived the expansion of humans into Europe. All other large predators were killed off. He fails to mention house cats. Maybe they weren't large enough? Seems a trivial reason to leave them out. So much could be learned. I find the absence of any discussion of domesticated cats in a book about predator domestication and the ecological evolution of the human-pet relationship, to be utterly baffling. What better species to compare dog domestication to, both for the convergent-evolution similarities, and for the contrasting differences?Hare's cognitive profiles of dogs leave out the single most important cognitive trait from a trainer's perspective: what the English call 'biddability', or Americans call 'will-to-please.' Why do some dogs inherently have a laser-like focus on their owners, while others pay only passing, occasional, unpredictable attention to their owners? Presumably, there is a genetic aspect to this. A discussion of will-to-please would have been extremely valuable.Hare downplays genetic differences between dog breeds based on the argument that their DNA is 99% identical. Thats not a convincing argument when anyone can readily observe the huge behavioral differences that exist between a Border Collie vs a Labrador vs a Beagle. Genes differ in their importance; oversimplified DNA arithmetic is not a sufficient explanation of these differences, let alone a reason to pretend they don't exist.Hare could have done a better job at explaining dog operant conditioning than by labeling it as 'clicker training.' That's like labeling the practice of fishing, as 'rod holding.' The clicker, like the fishing rod, is just a tool. He also presents dog cognitive training as an alternative to operant conditioning, whereas it appears more logically as an extension of it. Operant conditioning is still a powerful and effective training method when it is in synch with a dog's cognitive abilities. It is when we want to train something that is not a match for a particular dog's cognitive abilities, that operant conditioning runs into trouble.Hare says nothing about the formation of habits. Operant conditioning acts to build almost addictive performance in dogs. One can hypothesize that it triggers some releases of hormones in a dog's brain that motivate habitual performance of the desired behavior. In fact, this presumption is emphasized by most trainers who utilize operant conditioning. Susan Garrett calls it 'building value' for the behavior. After awhile the dog sees the behavior as a motivating reward in and of itself. I wish Brian Hare had given his take on this. Is habit-formation a strength of dogs that trainers can utilize?Bottom line: The Genius of Dogs highlights a whole new dimension to understanding dog behavior, while also being a fascinating account of how dogs evolved to become our best friends, viewed from the lens of science - a lens that is all too often missing in the dog training literature.