Are Horses Smarter Than Dogs? (Find Out!)

I always love letting my horses and dogs play together.

They’ve always gotten on really well and watching them is a joy.

They’re always testing each other in interesting ways and when I saw them all sharing a toy recently, I got to wondering about something.

Both animals have reputations for being intelligent and highly trainable, so I got wondering, which of these animals are smarter?

Such questions are never as simple as ‘this one is smarter’, but I nevertheless thought it would be worth looking into.

So, are horses smarter than dogs?

Well, it really depends on how you look at intelligence. Horses are strong in emotional intelligence and intuition, and are capable of impressive cognitive abilities. Dogs learn new tricks and skills very quickly, and can adapt very well to life with humans. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.

So, unfortunately, there really isn’t a straight answer.

Anyone who has interacted with both horses and dogs will know they are both highly intelligent animals with strong emotional connections to those around them.

So, before we go any further, let’s attempt to define intelligence.

What defines “smart”?

Smartness or intelligence is, when you really think about it, entirely subjective.

Humans might think of themselves as being ‘smarter’ than, say, apes, but apes seem to be mostly quite happy doing what they’re doing.

Maybe they think the same thing about us.

We can very broadly define intelligence as a combination of skills and abilities that allow animals to adapt to their environments.

Animal behaviorists look at things like emotional understanding, the depth of social connections, and memory retention to determine an animal’s intelligence.

The fact that dogs are, in the wild, predators while horses are prey animals is likely also to influence this question; they simply take stock of situations in different ways.

Both horses and dogs form strong bonds with their herd or pack, though for entirely opposite reasons.

In the wild, dogs have a socially capable brain in order that they can form a pack to take down prey—they can’t do it alone.

Horses, on the other hand, form herds because there is strength in numbers against predators.

Either way, evolving as social animals in this way does engender a certain amount of added ‘intelligence’, i.e., emotional intelligence.

Studies have shown that both horses and dogs can recognize human emotions.

Are horses intelligent animals?

So, observed in a vacuum, horses are indeed very intelligent animals.

Thanks to their herd dynamic, they have complex emotional understanding of individuals around them.

It’s interesting to consider how horses can become so aware and so conscious of the subtleties of human expression when, unlike dogs, they spend most of their time away from people.

Dogs live in the house with us, and can study our faces and body language at all times.

Horses don’t get the same access, and yet they are still innately very conscious of human emotions.

While dogs do just about have the upper hand when it comes to learning tricks and commands, horses’ ability to do this is still very impressive and shouldn’t be discounted.

Show horses and show dogs are just as common as one another, and you might imagine it’s more difficult for horses having to understand all of the equipment it’s wearing and the person it’s carrying while doing the tricks.

Either way, horses’ ability to learn tricks and commands indicates their ability for knowledge retention.

Are dogs intelligent animals?

There are probably more similarities than you might imagine when it comes to the intelligence of dogs and horses.

As I said, one of the things which drives horses’ emotional intelligence is their herd dynamic and social mindset.

Dogs form packs for different reasons, but it indicates basically the same socially capable brain.

You might say the prey has an ‘easier’ job than the predators do.

Planning elaborate hunting strategies (or at least instinctively executing them) indicates incredible intelligence, and though your four-legged friend probably doesn’t get up to much of that, it is present in their brain.

Herd mindset just needs to be able to identify danger and alert others to it, which, in a sense, you might think is ‘easier’.

The real area where dogs clearly have the upper hand is in learning tricks and commands.

The smartest breeds can learn all sorts of elaborate tricks that would likely be too much for a horse—although they are in many ways limited by their huge bulk compared to dogs.

Horses physically can’t stand on their hind legs, or anything like that.

It is worth bearing in mind, though, that an animal’s ability to learn a trick is really more determined by the skill of the trainer than the intelligence of the animal.

With the right methods and reinforcements, the ‘stupidest’ horse could learn the most elaborate trick.

So, intelligence is very slippery and difficult to define.

It is not as simple as saying a horse is smarter than a dog or vice versa.

Both live perfectly well and adapted to their own worlds, and both demonstrate impressive cognitive functions.

Dogs are certainly quicker at learning new skills and you might say have adapted better to life alongside humans.

The fact is, though, we are the ones who have driven that adaptation to the qualities we want in working animals.

Horses and dogs can be pets, work animals, anything you could think of, and it all requires different skills.