While we may never fully understand the mind of a dog we know that training is possible and has been ever since pooches were domesticated. What else is there?

One particular study revealed that training a dog not only teaches it new tricks but it actually makes the dog smarter. Dogs who are constantly mentally engaged grow smarter with each new challenge. Scientists determined that trained dogs acquire a ‘learning to learn' ability, which does not exist in untrained dogs.

Studies have also revealed that dogs have the ability to sniff out scents that humans cannot, due to the proteins found on the neurons inside their snouts. Dogs have 200 million olfactory receptors in comparison to humans' five million, which allows canines to sniff out things such as diseases, cancers and drugs. By training your dog properly, you can teach it to recognize particular scents.

A dog can also be empathetic, particularly apparent when he is trained well to understand all that is around him. We’ve seen the pictures of saddened police dogs when their partners are killed in the line of duty and no one can tell us a pug does not know when her pet parent is gravely ill.

For more information on this interesting topic please go over to Three Million Dogs and read about “stress” hormones and more about emotional and intellectual abilities of your dog.