Barkfest Weekend has started! You still have one more day to catch canine programming on National Geographic Channel. You can even catch up on what you’ve missed on their website.
Every year, Nat Geo has a weekend dedicated to dogs, and this year, they’re featuring a very cool three-part special called “Is Your Dog a Genius?”
Dog scientist Dr. Brain Hare hosts the three-night event. He is an evolutionary anthropologist and codirector of the Duke Canine Cognition Center, coauthor of The Genius of Dogs and cofounder of a dog IQ test site called Dognition – so he knows what he’s talking about!
If you watch the mini-series, you’ll get to delve deep into the canine mind to figure out just what’s going on in there. Dr. Hare puts his research to good use in this show, which he hopes will help dog owners better understand their furry friends.
The show not only explains just how a dog’s mind works, but it emphasizes that there is a lot more to doggy intelligence than just their breed. Dr. Hare will also go over games that you can do at-home with your dog to asses their intelligence (and even yours)!
The series will also showcase especially intelligent dogs with out-of-this-(canine)-world problem-solving abilities! One extraordinary furry guest on the show will be the brilliant Caspin and his owner, Wallis Brozman. One day, when outside with Caspin, her movement disorder, called dystonia, overtook her. She couldn’t move or speak, and Caspin was not attached to the harness Brozman typically used on him. But Caspin knew just what to do. He put his neck under her hand until he was able to loop her finger around his collar and pulled her back to the house.
Caspin’s incredible intelligence does not end at his heroic instincts. His amazing talents will be featured on the show. He not only understands English, but sign language as well. His loyalty and problem-solving skills rank him as a “Protodog,” a term from Dr. Hare’s Dognition test.
Catch the last of Barkfest tomorrow on Nat Geo!
