Can a dog (or any animal) be mentally handicapped?

[Yong Fang]

There used to be a neighbor dog I used to love. The neighbor would let him out to roam the neighborhood (this is common here and know several dogs I see everyday).

I love this dog. He was my buddy. The dog was also, mentally handicapped? One thing he would do is sort of run around in circles or just run one direction and back another. He was a young dog but I joked that if a dog could smoke meth, this one did. I could pet him and loved his belly rubbed. But he just wouldnt stay still.

Then the dog disappeared. I saw the young daughter whose family owned him adns asked where he was and was told he got ran over by a car. I can see that, since the animal didnt have any sense. I do blame the neighbor for letting him out so much. I do know that the man of the house would get annoyed at the dog because he wouldnt really come if you called him. The dog always followed me around so I just went to him and he followed me home.

The people have a new dog but never see him outside. Maybe the people learned a lesson or they got in trouble for letting their dog run loose.

I do know two sets of other dogs in the neighborhood that stay put on their street but if you walk the street will come out, barking angrily. They are small and wont bite but are very terrirorial. One set I named "Beavis and Butthead' (although one is a female).

But I think my late pooch was an Alpo can short of a load. Can dogs be mentally handicapped?

[GentlemanJim]

I believe that many people confuse the concepts of "obedience" vs "intelligence". Mostly because we insist upon casting ourselves in a superior role, and consequently assuming any intelligent being would be obedient to our whims.

How many highly intelligent people do you know who are obedient?

There have been studies correlating the trainability of dogs based upon how many generations they are removed from being (first) domesticated. And the studies seemed to show that bloodlines more recently "wild" were ill disciplined.

For instance a litter of puppies that resulted from the union of a domesticated German Shepherd and a wild coyote would be harder to train than puppies that resulted from two fully domesticated German Shepherds.

So, perhaps your "screwball" might have had some call of the wild still left in him?

[Caroline13]

Hard to know For Sure, animals act on how they were trained from babies I believe. My daughter once had a cat who bit the hands that fed him and I thought he was nuts....we got him grown so don't know his beginning. Cats are skittish anyway.

Now the new puppy my daughter is training, same breed as the one who died, is so totally different as my daughter is training her so differently than the first dog who got a lot of harsh treatment from my daughter's ex.

This all goes with people too, early beginnings of their lives.