On October 22, Moira Delia, who presents the show Animal diaries, invited three guests, one of them a vet who could hardly say a word because it seemed that the subject being discussed (intelligence of dogs) was a far cry from the truth.

It would be very nice of Moira were she and the others, excluding the vet, had to tell us from where they got their information about the subject matter. From what is written below she will learn why we, owners of purebred dogs, prefer pedigree dogs to mutts. It is not because we hate the mutts. On the contrary, many owners of purebreds or pedigree dogs also have one or two mutts, especially those who have the space and time for them.

All pedigree dogs (registered) are divided into seven groups in one local club whereas the other divides the dogs into 10 groups depending on the breed/s.

For those interested in dogs I recommend The intelligence of dogs, a book on dog intelligence by Stanley Coren, a professor of canine psychology at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver. Published in 1994, the book explains Coren’s theories about the differences in intelligence between different breeds of dogs. The author published a second edition in 2006.

Coren defines three aspects of dog intelligence in the book: instinctive intelligence, adaptive intelligence and working and obedience intelligence. Instinctive intelligence refers to a dog’s ability to perform the tasks it was bred for, such as herding, pointing, fetching, guarding or supplying companionship.

Adaptive intelligence is about a dog’s ability to solve problems on its own. Working and obedience intelligence is a dog’s ability to learn from humans beings.