There’s a lot written about the smartest dog breeds, but not as much written about some of the less intelligent ones. I decided to do some research to fix that.

So, what are the least intelligent dog breeds? The dumbest dog breeds are:

1. Afghan Hound
2. Chinese Shar-Pei
3. Chow Chow
4. Beagle
5. Borzoi (Russian Wolfhound)
6. Mastiff
7. Pekingese
8. Basset Hound
9. Cavalier King Charles Spaniel
10. Chihuahua

Now, right off the bat, I want to say that every dog has their own strengths and weaknesses, and just because the breed in general isn’t known for their intelligence doesn’t mean that your dog isn’t smart. However, with that being said, the ten breeds listed above are renowned for being difficult to work with and sometimes downright air headed. Although it’s hard to get exact metrics, the consensus online seems to be that the Afghan Hound is the least intelligent dog breed, on average.

Least Intelligent Dog Breeds

I want to preface this by saying that a) a dog’s intelligence is extremely hard to measure, and b) just because a dog is smart or dumb doesn’t mean they’ll make a better or worse companion. If you want to know more about how I ranked intelligence, and my thoughts as to how important this metric really is, skip to the bottom of the article.

For now, though, onto the main act. As of right now, the dumbest dog breeds include:

The Afghan Hound

If there’s a supermodel for the dog world, it’s this dog. Sleek, glamorous, and full of themselves, the Afghan Hound is a stylish creature renowned for their intelligence. Unfortunately, years of breeding for narrower heads has sacrificed the intelligence of the breed.

Afghan hounds are 25 inches tall and weigh about 60 pounds. Despite their somewhat pompous looks, they’re are still athletes at heart. These dogs love to run, can reach incredible speeds, and need a fair amount of exercise every day.

Personality-wise they’re a loyal and sensitive breed, who can appear aloof at sometimes. It’s always difficult to tell if this dog is ignoring you, doesn’t understand the command they’ve been given, or simply chose not to listen. Whatever it is, Afghan hounds are renowned for ignoring orders and doing their own thing far more frequently than they are for obeying your commands, which earn them the top spot on this list.

The Chinese Shar-Pei

One of the oldest dog breeds out there, the Shar-Pei is a reliable guard dog, but unfortunately, they’re not very good at much else. This dog is so set in their ways that it’s difficult to teach them anything new.

Large, slow, and reliable, these dogs are a old twist on the saying; instead of ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’, it’s, ‘you can’t teach an ancient breed anything’.

Now, that’s a bit unfair to the Shar-Pei, but they’re renowned for not listening to commands and quickly forgetting what they’ve been taught.

Aside from their aloofness, the Shar-Pei has a calm heart and a devoted personality. They’re fiercely protective of their family, and they have the size/instincts to be a good guard dog (just don’t try to teach them anything else besides that).

The Chow-Chow

These massively fluffy dogs are loyal, if slightly aloof companions. Trying to train them can be a bit of a nightmare, though, and once they’re trained, they can often be frustratingly stubborn to work with.

Chow Chow’s have a way of giving off the impression that they’re choosing to willfully ignore everything you’re saying. Maybe it’s because of their smile, or because you can hardly see their eyes, but their stubbornness borders on indolence.

Despite that, Chow Chow’s are low-maintenance, highly dignified dogs. They’re not very affectionate or playful, and they require a lot of grooming, but for the right owner, they can turn out to be a spirited companion.

Beagle

Like many other hounds, Beagles tend to be a little set in their ways and slow to learn new tricks. They have excellent noses and good hunting instincts, but they’re not good at adapting to new situations or thinking critically. This makes them difficult and frustrating to train, because you won’t be able to interest them in anything that doesn’t involve tracking down a scent.

With a playful attitude and an adorable face, these medium-sized dogs get along well with family, strangers, and other dogs. They love to play, and they require a good deal of exercise to keep them entertained. Once worn out, though, the Beagle is all too happy to curl up in your lap and fall asleep.

If you want a multi-dog household, the Beagle is an excellent choice. In fact, you almost need to have another dog to live with them, considering how poorly they react to being left alone.

Borzoi (Russian Wolfhound)

This old hunting breed fell victim to the same narrow-headed craze that overtook the Afghan Hounds. With their slim appearance and thin features, there’s not a lot left for the Borzoi between the eyes. Borzoi’s are hard to train and easily distracted.

If you can handle their borderline ADD, though, these dogs are absolute sweethearts. Despite their size, they’re a sensitive breed with major separation anxiety, so I wouldn’t suggest leaving them alone for any longer than necessary. Like most hounds, the have low exercise require; a quick sprint is all the Borzoi needs to be content.

Additionally, they look hilarious. This dog gives the impression that it’s a wise old wizard who could tell you your destiny in exchange for a pat on the head.

Mastiff

This ancient, massive war dog doesn’t do anything fast. Originating more than 5,000 years ago, the Mastiff has remained mostly unchanged in terms of size and features. Unfortunately, they spent so much time being selectively bred for size and ferocity that intelligence wasn’t a massive concern.

Nowadays, Mastiffs have left their fighting ways behind and are instead gentle, patient companions. Their size and instincts make them good guard dogs, but they’re just as happy curling up by your feet as they will be wrestling with you in the yard.

What they lack for in intelligence, Mastiff’s make up for in kindness and compassion. When it comes to their family, this massive breed has seemingly endless patience to give. As long as you can put up with their drooling, and the fact that they don’t always listen to you, these dogs make excellent pets.

Pekingese

These hilariously fluffy dogs are adorable, loving, and kind. After centuries of being pampered by Asian nobility, though, the Pekingese hasn’t had to use their brain for much in a long time, and the breed can be a little difficult to train.

Really, it’s not their fault. One of the favoured lapdogs of the Chinese imperial family, intelligence was never something that was important for the Pekingese. They’re not dumb, in truth, but when compared with dogs that were bred for hundreds of years to do work, they’re certainly not smart.

What they are is affectionate, proud fogs, who hold themselves with a quiet dignity that hints at their royal blood. They also make good watch dogs, as they tend to be aloof to strangers and bark if any approach.

Basset Hound

The Basset Hound is a good example as to how hard it is to measure a dog’s intelligence. These dogs are some of the best hunters on the planet, and they have excellent prey instincts— but when it comes to changing their behaviour, or teaching them something that goes against those instincts, they tend to struggle.

Similar to the Beagle, this dog was over-bred for a specific purpose (hunting) and now struggles to become interested by anything else. I’m not sure if the Basset hound doesn’t understand commands, or if they’re simply so bored that they choose not to follow; whatever the reason, though, these dogs are difficult to train.

These dogs have low exercise requirements and they love kids, so they’re great for families. However, they also tend to bark a lot, and there are some persistent health problems related to the breed that you should research before you buy one.

Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

I feel bad including the King Charles on this list, because they’re absolute sweethearts. Loving, affectionate, and loyal, these dogs are excellent companions, but they can be hard of hearing from time to time (to put it nicely). To say it more plainly, King Charles Spaniel’s don’t come off as super bright, and they’re not easy to train in anything past the basic commands.

Sometimes, though, the basic commands are all you need. Like I said, these dogs are a true companion breed, and they have nothing but love to give. They’re small enough to be considered a toy dog, but sturdy enough to handle a little bit of roughhousing. They’re super playful and they get along with everyone, so you don’t have to worry about them with children or other pets. Additionally, unlike many other fashion breeds, they’re easy to groom.

Chihuahua

As the smallest dog breed, it’s almost a given that the Chihuahua would end up on this list. They simply don’t have room for a large brain. That, combined with their lack of a working history, means they were never really bred to be smart.

This may be part of the reason that these dogs are so eager to challenge breeds that are ten times their size. With a typical case of ‘small dog syndrome’, the Chihuahua will never back down from a fight, even when they should.

They are one of the best watchdogs as recommended by experts, thanks to their distrust of strangers and how often they bark.  They’re fun-loving and never want to be more than a few feet away from you. However, they also have a large feisty streak, and it’s a toss-up as to whether or not they’ll listen when you try to tell them to do something.

How Do You Measure Dog’s Intelligence?

When writing this article, I had to grapple with one very important central question: how can you actually measure a dog’s intelligence? It’s not as if you can ask the breed to sit down and write an IQ test, so there has to be some other metric that comes to mind.

Usually when people think of dog’s intelligence, they might relate it to a few main things:

• Obedience: How well the dog listens when you give an order
• Trainability: How many tricks you can train your dog
• Instincts: What can the dog do without you needing to train it?
• Utility: Does the dog have a working past? Do they perform certain jobs that prove their intelligence?

Do any of these criteria really measure intelligence? Let’s take a look.

Obedience

How well your dog listens to you is probably the most instinctive measure that most people will use to measure intelligence. After all, it makes sense: if your dog listens, that means they understood what you said. The more your dog understands, the smarter they must be — right?

This is true in some cases. However, unfortunately, it’s a bit of a flawed metric to use, because it ignores one distinct possibility: the dog understands what you’re saying, they’re just choosing to ignore it.

To show how this can happen, let me tell a story about my Airedale Theo. Theo loves coming in car rides with us. Theo has also learned to recognize that, when we have shoes on, it means we’re about to leave the house.

We always bring Theo into the house before someone leaves, to make sure that he doesn’t go chasing after the car. However, he doesn’t always cooperate. If I’m planning to leave and Theo’s outside, I need to call him in before I put my shoes on. Otherwise, he’ll see my shoes, understand what’s happening, and refuse to come into the house.

It’s not that he’s too dumb to understand what I’m saying. In fact, it’s the opposite: he’s smart enough to understand that he’s trying to be duped, and so he chooses not to listen.

Obedience is a decent measure of intelligence, but you have to make sure that the dog isn’t just stubborn (like an Airedale terrier is). Otherwise, you might mistake defiance for dumbness.

Trainability

This is, perhaps, a better measure of how smart a dog will be: how many tricks, and what complexity of tricks, can you teach it. The logic here is pretty simple: the more tricks a dog can learn and memorize, the more brainpower they must have to be able to do so. On the surface, the logic looks very sound.

There are two main issues that you need to consider:

• Laziness is a factor: This is related to what we just talked about. Your dog might understand what ‘rollover’ means, but they could simply choose to ignore it unless you have a piece of steak in your hand. Does that make them less or more intelligent?
• Not every dog learns the same way: You need to ask yourself whether your dog is bad at being trained, or if you’re just training them in a way that they don’t respond to. Many house breeds, like Poodles, respond well to repetitive training. However, former hunting breeds like terriers do better when they’re faced with complex and changing problems. Much like humans, your dog might simply have a different way of learning.

So, while trainability is a good way to differentiate between the smart and the dumb dogs, it can be difficult to measure because of the factors discussed above.  

Instincts

A lot of people argue that a dog’s ability to follow commands and do superfluous tricks, like army crawling, doesn’t show their real intelligence. Instead, it’s better to look at what the dog can do without being taught. How do they handle uncertain situations? Do they understand things like family dynamics, sleep rituals, and protecting their territory?

These metrics are hard to qualify, but they’re important to at least consider. I think it’s a fair argument to say that dogs who can instinctively understand certain things should be credited with higher intelligence. For example, the first dog I ever owned was 6 when I was born. Although he had never been trained to be a guard dog, he understood a few key things:

• When my dad was away for business, he was the alpha of the household
• With my dad gone, me (a baby), my sister (also a baby) and my mom were less safe
• It was up to him to fill in that gap

Whenever my dad was away, that dog didn’t let anyone near me or my sister. He was suspicious and downright aggressive towards anyone he didn’t trust. However, at the right time, he was smart enough to understand that my and my sister, and babies, ad to be tolerated — he put up with us sitting on him and pulling his hair with as much good humour as he could summon.

Dogs with good instincts, be it hunting, protection, or even emotional sensitivity, should be given some benefit of the doubt when it comes to intelligence.

Utility

Finally, another argument I see often is that dogs who are used for a purpose, or were used in the past, have to have a higher intelligence. After all, if you’re going to be herding cows or tracking wildlife, you need to have the brains to do it.

I think there’s a lot of merit to this point. I even said a couple of times above that dogs who have spent hundreds of years being nothing more than companions wouldn’t have been bred for their smarts. Working breeds, on the other hand, were selected for intelligence, so it stands to reason that they would overall be smarter.

At the same time, though, I have a couple of working breeds on the list — so what gives?

To me, the difference comes down to how dynamic the task required of the breed is. If you look, most of the dogs on this list were single use breeds: they had to track or fight, and not much else.

I think this leads to over-selection within the breeding process. Eventually, after 20 generations of being bred to be a tracking dog, the Basset Hound is going to start to lose other characteristics, like their guard instincts or their ability to memorize what ‘shake a paw’ means.

On the other hand, breeds like a Border Collie need to work in a dynamic environment. They have to be able to follow commands, think for themselves, and respond to the situation as it changes. This means that they’ll be bred for their overall intelligence, not just for their ability to follow a scent.

My Solution

So, with all of that said, how did I actually decide which dogs would make this list? I found that the only effective way I could do it was to take into account everything I outlined above and try to keep my thinking as un-biased as possible, while still using some basic criteria.

If a breed came from a working background, that often gave it some ‘points’ towards intelligence. However, if the job was too narrow (as was the case for the Basset Hound or the Mastiff), those points didn’t count.

If dogs were classified as ‘untrainable’, that was usually a knock on their intelligence — unless I did some research and found that they were also a stubborn breed who was known to have good instincts. If dogs were super obedient, that counted for something — but not for much if it turned out they could only memorize 3 tricks.

I also relied a lot on other online resources. There are simply too many dog breeds out there for me to have personal experience myself, so I read what other authors were saying. Then, having done that, I would do my own research into the breed to see if I believed they belong on this list.

Are Any Dogs Really ‘Dumb’?

Now, even though I’ve just written an entire list about what the least intelligent dogs are, allow me to stand on my soapbox for a little bit: I wouldn’t listen too much to what I, or anyone else online for that matter, has to say about this.

For one, as I already alluded to, judging the intelligence of dogs is a 60% science at best. No one — and I mean no one — will have spent enough time with all 130 dog breeds to get an accurate picture of how smart they are. All of the issues mentioned above need to be considered: are they dumb, or only stubborn? Is high trainability really good intelligence, or should you look at their instincts instead? Whichever way you look at it, this isn’t a metric that’s easy to quantify.

Secondly, every single dog is different. I guarantee that there are some very intelligent Afghan Hounds out there, and I have personally met a Border Collie or two (widely considered to be the smartest dog breed) that can’t follow a command to save their life. The variance within breeds is massive. This also doesn’t take into account crossbreeds, rescue dogs, and mutts. So, if you have one of the 10 dog types that I’ve mentioned, please don’t take it personally, and please don’t assume that it means your pup is unintelligent.

Third, and most important: it doesn’t really matter. Here, I’ve tried to quantify what a dog’s intelligence is mostly by their ability to either follow commands or inherently understand what’s expected of them.

Now, that’s okay to do for the scope of this list, but is it really that important? Many of the dogs mentioned are very sensitive and can sense when their owners are sad. Emotional intelligence is still intelligence, and having a dog who knows to comfort you when you’re down is probably a lot more useful than having one who can learn every single command word you can think of.

To add on to that, not everyone needs their dog to be whipcord smart. Personally, I just want my pet to be able to follow a few basic rules. Past that, I more want them around for the brightness that they bring to my life, and I could care less if they end up on some list online.

Finally, intelligence might not even be that good of a feature in a dog. As a lifelong Airedale owner, I can attest that there’s such a thing as a dog who’s too smart for their own good. Instead, it might be better to look for agreeability and trainability; you might find that your life is easier if you do so.

In summary: this list is meant to be informative and entertaining, but don’t put too much weight on it. No one really knows how to measure a dog’s intelligence, and even if they did, I don’t see much reason why it should be a very important measurement.