Dog Cognitive Profiles: How Your Breed Thinks

Canine cognition · Research sample of 25,463 dogs Dog Cognitive Profiles: How Your Breed Thinks A cognitive profile is not a score. It is a shape: the pattern of what a dog leans on when it has a problem to solve. Two dogs can reach the same answer by completely different routes — one by watching your face for a hint, the other by working the physics out alone — and the profile is what tells those two minds apart. The explorer below lets you pick any of the 25 breeds with at least 150 assessed dogs and see its profile across the five dimensions of the assessment, indexed against every other breed in a research sample of 25,463 dogs. The dashed line is the all-breed average. Almost every breed profile comes out jagged: tall on one or two dimensions, ordinary on the rest. Flat, all-round profiles are rare. Use the breed profile as a starting hypothesis about your dog, not a verdict. Breed-level averages describe a crowd, and individual dogs scatter widely around them. The profile is most useful as a lens: if your breed tends toward independent problem-solving, a dog who ignores your pointing is probably being a good example of its type rather than being stubborn. Pick a breed and see its five-dimension profile indexed against every other breed in the dataset. The dashed line is the all-breed average. Breed cognitive profile explorer Every breed has a jagged profile — strong on some dimensions, ordinary on others. Research sample of 25,463 dogs · indexed across the 25 breeds with at least 150 dogs each Rows : The five cognitive dimensions (empathy, communication, cunning, memory, reasoning) Measured in categories, one bar each Bar length : The selected breed's standing on that dimension Measured in index 0–100 across the 25 breeds with at least 150 dogs Dashed line : All-breed average for that dimension Measured in same 0–100 index Value printed on each row : Raw score Measured in gaze seconds 0–90 for empathy; proportion correct 0–1 for the rest Choose a breed Indexed score (0–100 within each dimension across breeds) Communication reading your gestures 0.665 proportion correct (0–1) all-breed avg Empathy gaze & bonding 55.5 gaze score (0–90) all-breed avg Memory recall 0.579 proportion correct (0–1) all-breed avg Reasoning inference 0.435 proportion correct (0–1) all-breed avg Cunning physical problem-solving 0.635 proportion correct (0–1) all-breed avg 0 50 100 Bars are indexed 0–100 within each dimension across all 25 breeds; the raw value with its unit is printed at the end of each row. The dashed line marks the all-breed average. Golden Retriever : n=

950 . Source: Dognition Canine Cognition Data Center · research sample of 25,463 dogs dognition.com/data The finding: Every breed has a jagged profile — strong on some dimensions, ordinary on others. Cognitive style, not a single ranking, is what separates breeds. How we measured this Bars are indexed 0–100 within each dimension across the 25 breeds with at least 150 assessed dogs, so a full bar means “highest of any breed here,” not a perfect score. Download CSV Embed this chart Frequently asked questions What is a dog cognitive profile? A cognitive profile describes the pattern of a dog's strengths across separate abilities — communication, empathy, memory, reasoning, and cunning — rather than reducing intelligence to a single score. Can breed tell me my dog's personality? Only loosely. Breed profiles describe averages, and individual dogs vary far more than breed groups do. The profile is a useful hypothesis about tendencies, not a description of any specific dog. How do I find my own dog's cognitive profile? Dognition's at-home assessment uses short science-based games to measure the same five dimensions and places your dog into one of nine cognitive profiles, with a full report on how it thinks. Related Related deep dives The Smartest Dog Breed? 25 Breeds, Measured No breed owns the top-right corner. Twenty-five breeds plotted by reasoning and empathy from a research sample of 25,463 dog assessments. 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. Related breed pages Border Collie cognitive profile Cognitive profile, strengths, and how individual dogs of this breed actually vary. Golden Retriever cognitive profile Cognitive profile, strengths, and how individual dogs of this breed actually vary. German Shepherd cognitive profile Cognitive profile, strengths, and how individual dogs of this breed actually vary. Labrador Retriever cognitive profile 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