46 Pet Owners Who Suddenly Realized Their Pet Was Actually Quite Intelligent

The other day, my German Shepherd reminded me to give him his monthly flea/tick treatment chew when I was a few days late for the first time ever. It's a pill he only gets once a month. He gets up, leads me to the shelf where I keep it, and nudges his head toward the box. Then he sits there smiling and drooling, patiently waiting for me to figure it out.


I knew dogs had an internal clock, but I didn't know it went *that* hard.


Another example was a couple years ago, when we'd only recently adopted him and he got giardia. I'd been taking him out to the yard regularly to go to the bathroom so he didn't have an accident (he'd already had one on the carpet and I had to replace it). One time, he just wanted to go out and play but I wasn't in the mood. So he goes to the same rug I'd just replaced, and he started squatting like he was gonna go to the bathroom. I said "Noooo!" and then I ran with him to the backyard. He then proceeded to *not* go to the bathroom and just run and play outside for 30 mins. .

On my way to the kitchen to do dishes, I walked past my lab, asleep on the couch. I was just finishing up in the kitchen when there was a knock on my front door.

It was the neighbor, out of breath "Your dog just stole one of my chickens! I chased her here." I pushed the door open so that he could see her, still asleep on the couch. (Mistaken identity? She's been right here?)

Then we heard it. Clucking. In my house. There was a chicken in my living room and a giant lab sized hole in my back screen door. But she was innocently "sleeping".

So we've got an elevator inside our home since it's rather hard for my grandparents to use the stairs, but I just found out that my dog knows how to use it too after watching us a few times 😂

He's figured out which buttons take him to which floors too haha.

Our cat alerts us to high blood pressure. She'll try and get my daughter to sit down/slow down and every time I notice it I ask my daughter if she's feeling dizzy. Also can't raise my voice to talk in the other room or get stressed out around the cat cause She'll start acting panicked and get me to calm down. Daughter has dysautonomia and the cat noticed something was up even before the diagnosis.

I have an older horse, a gelding, who is incredibly intelligent but very cheeky. I had brought home my mare for the holidays, and had her housed in the same pen as him. At the time, my mare was younger and I lunged her often (it involves holding a whip and asking them to go around you in a circle on a long lead). The older gelding would watch us. One day, my Mom watched the older gelding pick up a stick and stand perpendicular to my mare. He waved the stick around by bobbing his head up and down. She did not react, so he tapped her on the b**t with it. She put her ears back but began to go around him in a circle. He turned on his haunches to stay facing her. He effectively "lunged" her for several small circles before she seemed to realize that she wasn't tied to anything, then kicked him in the chest and ran away. He dropped the stick and went back to something else. 🤣.

Our iguana is fully potty-trained. We have a tiny “iguana door” built into our screen door to the outside. She steps outside, does her business, and then walks back in and goes back into her cage.

My dog loves car rides and loves driving around our suburb with his head out the window. He realised that if he bolted out the door, I would always come fetch him in the car. The little rascal found out the number of blocks he had to run down to guarantee a car ride. Now, every time I fetch him, he waits 4 blocks down the street and will just sit there with a smug look on his face.

Our cats are incredibly emotionally smart and aware. They always seem to know when someone's in distress, and they're always really sweet about it.

Also, I swear two of them understand English. If you try and pick up our Balinese out of nowhere, she'll dig her claws into whatever she's standing on. You have to ask her if she wants uppies or a ride before she'll let you pick her up. She absolutely loves being held, she just needs communication ;_;

Also-also, our little old lady who loves loafing on people has figured out she can't lie on my tummy, I have a big cyst so the whole area is pretty sensitive. She makes sure to loaf on my hip instead.

I’ve always thought our chicken, Black Hole, was a cute little thing, but I never thought she knew how to work her brain.

The other day, tho, I was talking to someone, mentioned her by name, and she stopped and stared at me in horror.

I didn’t know she knew her name.

When my kids were little they went over to a friend's house a few blocks over. The dog wanted to go too and looked forlornly out of the window as they left. A few minutes later he asked to go outside for the bathroom. When he never came back to the door we went to investigate and found a suspicious new hole under the fence.

After a brief search we found the dog patiently sitting in their friend's driveway. He'd followed their scent all the way to a house he'd never been anywhere near before.

My small cat would sit on one of our cabinets and violently smack the corner of the wall as high as she could every day, random hours.

My mom got fed up with it and moved the cabinet to discover water damage. This cat heard the very small roof leak we had and was trying to alert us.

She's always been very smart but that discovery was something else. Now any time we see her doing something out of the ordinary we pay close attention.

When the cat is doing something wrong and I raise my voice to get her to stop, she will run to the window and pretend she sees a bird outside.

I think everybody who has pets and loves them typically sees how intelligent they can be. But it’s wild how emotionally in tune they can be. When we got our two kittens We had a former working support dog. He was so sweet and so smart. We used to just let him outside with no leash. He was a grown man and earned every bit of his freedom. He would rarely leave the property, and if he was ever approached by another dog, he would just act as if he was a person handle it calmly and kindly never bark or growl. He was more of a housemate than a pet. He essentially trained my kittens and I can see his essence in them Every day. When our pup passed away, our boy cat just couldn’t handle it. He would cry all day long. Pee on himself poop wherever he was standing. We had to get him medicine for him to take for a few weeks until his grieving process was over. It was heartbreaking. Seeing him lose his best friend.
Few months later I took a job 2 1/2 hours away from my two cats and my girlfriend and I was going to be living there for a few years and I remember sobbing next to my girlfriend. My boy cat desperately tried to console me. He’s always been affectionate, but it was obvious he could tell I was in distress.

Year ago when I bought my house, my brother, nephew, and his dog moved in to my house and it was just so cool seeing the dog who never interacted with cats try to chase my cat around, and watching my cat stand his ground, only to rub his head against the dog. They became best friends very quickly, sleeping together and playing together. I was worried when the pup moved out. Our boy would be in distress, but he wasn’t. I think he understood the dog didn’t pass away. He just moved away. It’s funny. I’m telling the story now because the dogs back at my house while my brother is on vacation and the two were so happy to be reunited.

This was all a while ago now the cats have been around a lot of death and sadness and I can tell it’s aged them. They’re literally attached to my hip all day long. We let them outside like I used to let the dog outside. They’re grown adults and they’ve been through plenty.

Oh also my boy cat can open doors….

My Petunia passed away last week, and this is a story that I have shared a lot this week.


She was an 11 year old English Bulldog. She was the most stubborn thing. Such an attitude.

As most bullies, she had some horrendous gas near the end. One morning, it was obvious that my husband forgot to give her some pumpkin the night before. The house was quite sulfery. I said, "Good morning, Stinky." She got up (unusual, as her favorite hobby was snoring) and did a lap of the living room, stopped to look me in the face, and turned to crop dust me. Then she went back to her bed to finish her morning nap.


I never called her stinky again, and she never crop dusted me again.

My childhood cat was an outdoor cat, and one day she was sunning herself on the porch while my dad was doing chores. My dad said “why don’t you make yourself useful and go catch a mouse or something?” as he passed by her.

A few minutes later he circled back around the house and found her in the yard, with a mouse pinned under her paws.

I have 6 ducks and 3 chickens. One windy day the chicken's coop door blew closed leaving one of the girls in. Our lead female duck started alerting there was trouble. I went outside to see if there was a hawk or if neighbors dog was bugging them. But no she was just letting me know.

My dog has a set of identical balls. They're all different colours, and he switches between them, picking a favourite. He also had a really bad habit of tossing the balls under the furniture so he can fish them out.

One day, he did this but couldn't get it out. So he comes to stand in front of me, staring at me. When he knows I'm paying attention, he looks at another ball on the floor and then looks over at the couch his current favourite is under. Then, he looks back at me... he literally had a silent conversation with me.

I watched a cat slide under a windowsill, and stretch to push the window open a little more with his back. The same cat had a special meow to call the other cat, like a name.

My friend had a baby. The baby started to fuss and the dog (a collie) went to the diaper bag, grabbed a bottle and dropped it at my friend's feet. She had not been trained to do that.

We have two spaniels.

Last year my parents gave them some chew toys that have some kind of flavored stuff on one side. Our pup Annie absolutely loves them, and tries to hoard them.

If our other pup Lucky has one, she’ll try to take it. If he won’t give it away, she’ll grab one of his tennis balls (his favorite thing in the world) and strut around the room with it until he chases her. Then she’ll drop the ball and grab the chew toy.

She has absolutely no interest in tennis balls at any other time.

With our first cat, she loved roast beef lunch meat, never gave it to her willing but she sometimes got my husband’s dropped pieces. One day I opened the fridge to put something away and she came flying in, nudged a container on the bottom shelf aside and grabbed the roast beef before running toward the bathroom. She was crouched behind the toilet, knowing I couldn’t get to her easily, trying to open the container.