The Smartest Dog Breed? 25 Breeds, Measured

Canine cognition · Research sample of 25,463 dogs The Smartest Dog Breed? 25 Breeds, Measured Every smartest-dog-breed list you have ever read traces back to the same source: a survey of obedience judges ranking how quickly breeds learn commands. That measures trainability and biddability — real traits, but only one narrow slice of a mind. It is why the same three or four breeds top every list, and why so many owners of “low-ranking” breeds feel the ranking has nothing to do with the dog they know. Measure cognition directly and the tidy ranking falls apart. Plot the 25 breeds with at least 150 assessed dogs by reasoning against empathy, and no breed sits alone in the top-right corner where a genuinely “smartest” breed would have to be. Golden retrievers, the people's choice for smartest, sit high on empathy and low on inference. The single highest reasoning score in the set belongs to the Yorkshire terrier. Border collies excel at reading human communication while landing mid-pack on independent reasoning. Grouped by AKC classification, the pattern gets clearer rather than more ranked: herding dogs lead on reasoning, sporting dogs on empathy and gaze, and hounds on memory. What each group was bred to do shows up in how it solves problems. There is no smartest breed — there are different cognitive job descriptions. The seven AKC breed groups compared on communication, empathy, memory, reasoning, and cunning. Every breed group has a cognitive superpower Each AKC breed group leads on a different dimension — herding on reasoning, sporting on empathy, hounds on memory. Research sample of 25,463 dogs · 7 AKC groups, n=856 to n=3,600 Vertical axis : AKC breed group (sporting, herding, toy, non-sporting, working, terrier, hound) Measured in categories, with the number of dogs shown per group Horizontal axis (empathy panel) : Empathy — gaze score Measured in seconds of eye contact, 0–90 Horizontal axis (all other panels) : Mean score for the breed group Measured in proportion of trials correct, 0–1 Communication — reading your gestures · measured as proportion correct (0–1) Empathy — gaze & bonding · measured as gaze score (0–90) Memory — recall · measured as proportion correct (0–1) Reasoning — inference · measured as proportion correct (0–1) Cunning — physical problem-solving · measured as proportion correct (0–1) Each dimension is scaled to its own range so differences are visible; bars are not comparable across panels. Empathy is a gaze score (0–90); every other dimension is a proportion correct (0–1), and each bar prints its raw value with its unit. Sample

sizes: Sporting (n=3,600), Herding (n=2,625), Toy (n=1,601), Non-Sporting (n=1,393), Working (n=1,340), Terrier (n=1,199), Hound (n=856) . Source: Dognition Canine Cognition Data Center · research sample of 25,463 dogs dognition.com/data The finding: Herding dogs lead on reasoning, sporting dogs on empathy and gaze, and hounds on memory. What breeders selected for shows up in how these dogs solve problems. How we measured this Breed group is assigned from the owner-reported breed using the AKC classification; mixed-ancestry dogs are excluded here. Group sizes range from n=856 (Hound) to n=3,600 (Sporting). Download CSV Embed this chart Twenty-five breeds plotted by reasoning against empathy. If one breed were simply “the smartest,” it would sit alone in the top-right corner. The smartest-dog-breed myth, in one chart No breed owns the top-right corner: high reasoning and high empathy rarely land in the same breed. Research sample of 25,463 dogs · 25 breeds with at least 150 dogs each; dot size = sample size Horizontal axis : Reasoning Measured in proportion of trials correct, 0–1 (plotted 0.35–0.63) Vertical axis : Empathy — gaze score Measured in seconds of eye contact, 0–90 (plotted 38–64) Bubble size : Number of dogs assessed for that breed Measured in dogs, from 150 to 6,107 Reading this chart: further right = better reasoning, further up = more gaze; top-right = high on both. 25 breeds, each with at least 150 dogs in the research sample. Dot size is sample size. Source: Dognition Canine Cognition Data Center · research sample of 25,463 dogs dognition.com/data The finding: No breed owns the top-right corner. Border collies score high on communication but middling on reasoning, and the highest reasoning score in the set belongs to the Yorkshire terrier. How we measured this Only breeds with at least 150 assessed dogs are plotted. Dot area is proportional to sample size. Reasoning is a 0–1 proportion; empathy is gaze duration in seconds. Download CSV Embed this chart Frequently asked questions What is the smartest dog breed? There isn't one. Across 25 breeds with at least 150 assessed dogs each, no breed leads on both reasoning and empathy. Border collies read human communication exceptionally well, the highest reasoning score belongs to the Yorkshire terrier, and golden retrievers top empathy while scoring low on inference. Why do border collies top most intelligence rankings? Traditional rankings measure how quickly a breed learns obedience commands, and border collies are exceptionally biddable. On direct cognitive measures they lead on communication

rather than on independent reasoning. Which breed group is the most intelligent? Each group leads on a different dimension: herding dogs on reasoning, sporting dogs on empathy and gaze duration, and hounds on memory. The strengths track what each group was selected to do. Does this mean breed doesn't matter at all? Breed shifts tendencies, but the spread between individual dogs is far larger than the spread between breed groups — so breed is a weak predictor of how any single dog thinks. Related Related deep dives Does Breed Predict How Smart a Dog Is? Individual variation dwarfs breed-group variation: dogs differ on reasoning twelve times more than AKC groups do, across 25,463 assessments. Dog Cognitive Profiles: How Your Breed Thinks Look up any breed's five-dimension cognitive profile — communication, empathy, memory, reasoning, cunning — from 25,463 dog assessments. Related breed pages Border Collie intelligence Cognitive profile, strengths, and how individual dogs of this breed actually vary. Golden Retriever intelligence Cognitive profile, strengths, and how individual dogs of this breed actually vary. German Shepherd intelligence Cognitive profile, strengths, and how individual dogs of this breed actually vary. Labrador Retriever intelligence Cognitive profile, strengths, and how individual dogs of this breed actually vary. All six charts in the Canine Cognition Data Center Source: Dognition — a research sample of 25,463 dogs. Free to share with attribution. Test your dog Based on the work of Dr. Brian Hare & Vanessa Woods Every Dognition guide, assessment, and blog post is grounded in the research and methodologies of Dr. Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods at the Duke Canine Cognition Center. Their work established that "smart" isn't one number — dogs think across five distinct cognitive dimensions, and the best training matches the method to the mind. Book · 2013 The Genius of Dogs How dogs are smarter than you think — the founding text on canine cognitive science. Read more Book · 2024 Puppy Kindergarten The Duke Puppy Kindergarten study — how the first 16 weeks shape a dog for life (as covered by The New York Times). Read the NYT feature