Is your dog clever? Here’s a new way to tell

Very few dogs are able to learn multiple names for different toys – but those that do have one thing in common, a study has shown.

Researchers found that border collies with the rare ability tend to be even more playful than normal collies, and encourage owners who think their dogs can recognise names for several objects to get in touch via their website.

Adam Miklosi, the study's co-author and head of the Department of Ethology at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, said: "This study shows that there is a relationship between extremely high levels of playfulness and giftedness in learning object verbal labels in dogs.

"However, it is important to note that this does not necessarily imply that playfulness is what makes this talent emerge.

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“We do not exclude it, but it could also be that the extreme playfulness in the gifted individuals is driven or perceived by the owners as a result of frequent playful interactions with their dogs, with named toys."

Researchers investigated dogs who they described as "gifted word learners", those who are capable of learning several names for toys and remembering them for two months.

The researchers said that very few dogs have this capacity, and wanted to investigate whether the animals shared certain personality traits.

They asked the owners of 21 gifted dogs from all over the world to complete a dog personality questionnaire.

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Borbala Turcsan, co-author of the study, said: "This is a validated questionnaire that reveals personality traits in dogs and has been already successfully used in several published studies."

The data obtained about the personality traits of the gifted word learners was then compared to data obtained with the same questionnaire on a matched sample of 144 typical dogs from two different countries, Austria and Hungary.

"We restricted our investigation to border collies because most of the gifted word learners belong to this breed," said Dr Claudia Fugazza, lead researcher of the study.

The only difference the researchers found between the gifted and typical border collies was that gifted dogs were rated by their owners as more playful.

It should be noted that working dogs are more playful than dogs of non-working breeds.

The border collie is a breed that was selected for working purposes. Thus, typical border collies are already very playful and the study revealed that the gifted dogs were even more playful.

The ability to learn object names is very rare and dogs with this capacity are important for research.

The researchers encouraged dog owners that believe their dogs know several toy names to contact them through the form on the Genius Dog Challenge website.

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