Is it intelligence per se, or is it training (having been taught over and over not to rush to a stranger and having been punished for doing so.

My vote is that it is training – not decision-making intelligence.

Yep. It’s quite arrogant to assume we’re the only intelligent beings on Earth.

That particular trick, however, is actually not too impressive. It’s a very simple equation of classical conditioning: see a human, get a treat. The dog never needs to be taught what to do. If the association is strong enough, his mind will be on the treat as soon as he sees a person. It’s like a little girl learning that candybars are delicious. Soon, she’ll ask for one as soon as she sees the rack at the store. Did she get taught? Or did she just learn to anticipate a treat?

Wouldn’t the dog have to think in terms of what it does not do rather than thinking in terms of what it does?

Not necessarily. In training lingo, sitting for the treat would be called an incompatible behavior. It’s impossible to simultaneously sit and run up to a person. Learning to reliably do the one eliminates the need for learning not to do the other.

Decision-making can be observed in dogs all day long, though. It’s pretty impressive to see a really good Stay, where the entire dog is quivering with anticipation of being released. But the real decisions happen outside of cues, with dogs that are allowed to think for themselves. This is often working dogs, like a guidedog that will disregard the Onward cue if following it would lead the team into moving traffic or close to an edge. But family dogs have the capacity to go against their training and make independent good choices, too. They can’t say “Timmy fell down the well”, but they can certainly go get help, protect a lost child, communicate medical problems, refuse to be duped, trick people, prevent a robbery, alert to a fire…

One of the neighbors on our road has trained her dog to sit when it sees a car coming. I can’t tell whether or not she uses any verbal commands but the dog appears to just do it.
It is amazing.

Yes, it takes a certain amount of intelligence for a dog to do that, but not as much as it takes for a dog (without training) to move its food out of reach of a smaller dog. My Chesapeake Bay Retriever used to do this regularly to get his food away from my cousin’s Norfolk Terrier. He would pick up his food bowl and put it on top of his crate.

My Australian Shepherd eats too fast, so I got him one of those dog bowls that forces them to eat much more slowly. After one frustrating meal, he just dumped it onto the floor.

https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/everyyay-take-it-slow-white-slow-feeder-dog-bowl

When I got my Puli a puzzle box for treats (similar to this one https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/outward-hound-tornado-puzzle-dog-toy-large-3128190) he figured it out in about a half hour and emptied it.

Just a few examples from my own experience . Dogs have deductive reasoning skills.

@longgone I wish you could have come and trained Frodo!

Training, not intelligence.
And animals don’t “think” the same way we humans do.
Humans have two minds. A subconscious, reactive mind and a conscious thinking/reasoning mind. That’s why we consciously (being aware) “think” in words. (Also the ability to determine the concept of “self.”)
Dogs, as with other animals, have only subconscious reactive minds and can only react to conditions and training/experience. There are no words or “barking” going on in their heads that we humans would relate to as conscious “thinking.” They have no ability to conceive of time or which direction the sun comes up or goes down. They can only react.

Well obviously the dog has to learn through training that it will get a treat if it doesn’t rush to a stranger. But it has to have the intelligence to learn and the ability to make the decision to wait for the treat rather than rushing to the stranger. It’s a choice, and yes, animals have much more intelligence than we give them credit for. Of course they don’t “think” like we do! But they do think and as @longgone said, it’s arrogant of us to assume that only humans have intelligence.

Sure that’s intelligence, the intelligence to respond to classical conditioning. I don’t know about the rest of the things you’re saying, but dogs being intelligent enough to be trained is not a controversial subject. Am I missing something?

Consider this. Even after the dog gets its treat, it stays away from me. It still seems to me that there is this aspect of understanding what it should not do. Or maybe I am reading too much into this. A dog that is trained not to poop indoors also understands that as something it should not do.

@LostInParadise That may not be the best example of dog’s intelligence but many dogs do have intelligence of varying degrees. I’ve read of dogs who are told to go into another room in which many toys are scattered and fetch the blue ball. They succeed. Not every dog can do this but it is clearly a mark of discrimination, not rote learning.

^^ Not to mention the dogs who have learned how to communicate, even in whole sentences, by pressing buttons with their paws. Once the dog understands the concept, it can make its desires known, or those things it does not want. I saw a video of a dog who wanted to go outside to play in the pool. Mom said not now, and the dog was decidedly disappointed. It repeated itself, she still said not now, and the dog finally accepted it, but pressed “sad”. That’s not just training.

https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/training/how-to-teach-your-dog-to-talk/

It surprises me that some don’t seem to understand that being trained, in and of itself, requires a degree of intelligence. Intelligence can, in some cases, be measured by the facility and speed that one masters the “if this…then that” process. Magnitude of intelligence can be measured by how far it is taken by the individual thinker.
I never trained my dog to move the food dish, he decided not to attack the terrier (probably wise, terriers are fearsome beasties) and found another way to protect the food.
One person throws a rock, another takes that basic principle and launches spacecraft into orbit.

@LostInParadise Consider this. Even after the dog gets its treat, it stays away from me. It still seems to me that there is this aspect of understanding what it should not do. Or maybe I am reading too much into this. A dog that is trained not to poop indoors also understands that as something it should not do.

After this dog gets the treat, he’s probably hoping for another. And the desire to keep one’s immediate surroundings clean is, I believe, instinctual. But as to your general point: I absolutely agree that dogs appear to understand the meaning of “Don’t do that”. I think the “Leave It” cue is a good example of this, especially because dogs do not just freeze when they hear that. They still do whatever they want, just not that one thing the human doesn’t like. That’s so clear in canine communication, too. A lot of their facial expressions and body language serve to stop other dogs. No doubt, dogs can communicate and understand the meaning of “No”.

My first dog, who was a freaking angel, once spent four hours home alone, lying on the kitchen floor, nose right next to a cheese sandwich. I had left and told her “Leave It”, but I was sure she’d eat it after 15 minutes, tops. She loved food. But she was also very, very good.

@kritiper Training, not intelligence. And animals don’t “think” the same way we humans do. Humans have two minds. A subconscious, reactive mind and a conscious thinking/reasoning mind. That’s why we consciously (being aware) “think” in words. (Also the ability to determine the concept of “self.”) Dogs, as with other animals, have only subconscious reactive minds and can only react to conditions and training/experience. There are no words or “barking” going on in their heads that we humans would relate to as conscious “thinking.” They have no ability to conceive of time or which direction the sun comes up or goes down. They can only react.

How do you know all this? There’s a neurobiological process happening when thinking occurs. Can you explain it? Because I can’t – but neurobiologists can, and they no longer believe that animals blindly react. Mammals have brains that are very similar to ours. Dog brains certainly have the areas of higher reasoning you mention. One article about this. Also, can’t you think much faster than you can speak or write? How do you know you’re actually thinking in words? What’s happening in our brains is just electrical stimulation, neurotransmitters, nerves. They don’t spell out thoughts. I think it’s much more likely that we have an unfathomable amount of neurons who are communicating in their own “language” (which we don’t understand). And because we can’t conceive of this type of knowledge transfer, we translate our thoughts to words. After all, you wouldn’t say that babies can’t think, right? Or even an adult human who has grown up alone, without access to language learning.

@longgone I read about it.
And consider this: If animals could think the way that we do, they’d talk!

@longgone , In Being and Nothingness, Sartre claims that the concept of “not” is the essence of consciousness. This would seem to be a bit of an exaggeration, but surely this concept is an important prerequisite for consciousness.