Too Smart Dogs

So my Corgi Ollie is the smartest dog I’ve ever had. His ingenuity has always impressed me. For example, when he was a young pup he would carry his bones over to an available tennis shoe, prop the bone in the opening and then proceed to hold the shoe down with one paw and get to gnawin’.

This blew me away! His legs are so short that he can’t hold the bone with both of his paws in order to be successful in his chewing adventures, so he decided that a shoe was the perfect tool.

Unfortunately, this genius doesn’t stop here. What I mean by this is that he often outsmarts me. He’s trained me in ways I didn’t know I could be trained. An example here is that he learned when it’s dinner time, I feed the cat and then I feed the dogs. Sounds pretty normal right? Yeah, except he also learned that if he bothered the cat, who roams when she’s hungry, then I would feed her because I needed for her to stop roaming so he wouldn’t be able to chase her.

So from then on, the cat roaming was a signal to Ollie and he learned “chase cat = get fed”. Even though the whole middle step still exists (feed cat), his little chess brain moves steps ahead much farther than my Golden’s does and this has posed me with challenge after challenge in my wonderful world of dog training.

So, have any of you experienced anything similar? Have you found anything that counteracts these brainiacs? Any tips or tricks? I’ll post in the comments some solutions I’ve come up with. Looking forward to hearing from you all! Feel free to include any of your trials and tribulations if you would like any advice.