The New York Times Asks: Can You Tell How Smart a Dog Is?
What does it mean for a dog to be smart? A new New York Times Opinion article, “Can You Tell How Smart a Dog Is by Giving It a Test?”, takes that deceptively simple question into the science of canine cognition.
The question matters because the tests people commonly use to judge dogs often reward just one kind of performance: obedience. A dog who responds quickly may look brilliant, while a dog who pauses, watches, trusts a person, or tries a different strategy may look as though they have failed. But those dogs may simply be using different kinds of intelligence.
There is no single kind of smart
That idea has shaped the work of Dr. Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods for decades. At the Duke Canine Cognition Center, their research helped move the conversation away from ranking dogs and toward understanding the strategies each dog uses to navigate the world.
A dog may be unusually skilled at following a human gesture. Another may ignore the gesture and solve the problem alone. One remembers where an object disappeared; another reads a person's face before making a choice. Each response reveals something different. None can be reduced honestly to a single number.
This is the central lesson of Hare and Woods's book The Genius of Dogs: dogs succeeded not because every dog thinks alike, but because the species developed an extraordinary range of social and cognitive strategies for living alongside people.
Why a test can still be useful
A good cognitive test does not stamp a dog “smart” or “not smart.” It creates situations where a dog can show which information they rely on: a person's gesture, their own memory, social trust, persistence, or independent reasoning.
That is how the Dognition Assessment is designed. Its science-based games map a dog's choices across five dimensions — empathy, communication, cunning, memory, and reasoning — and turn those patterns into a cognitive profile. The result is not a grade. It is a clearer picture of how that individual dog learns and solves problems.
More than 122,000 dogs have completed the assessment, giving Dognition an unusually broad view of cognitive diversity. Across nine profiles, the same finding returns again and again: there is no best way to think. The useful question is not “How smart is my dog?” but “How is my dog smart?”
Understanding changes the relationship
Once owners recognize their dog's preferred strategy, everyday behavior looks different. The dog labeled stubborn may be an independent problem-solver. The dog who waits for help may be exceptionally tuned in to people. The dog who struggles with one memory game may excel at reading a gesture.
That understanding has practical value. It can shape training, enrichment, play, and the way an owner notices change as a dog ages. It also replaces judgment with curiosity — a better starting point for any relationship.
