It
may be hard to believe, but you can actually change the physiology of
your dog's brain. You can make it larger and more efficient simply by
providing certain experiences for your pet. The same process will make
your dog more intelligent and give his personality an added degree of
stress resistance.

The research which supports these startling claims began in
the 1940's when Canadian psychologist Donald O. Hebb took home a few
lab rats and gave them to his children to keep as pets. The children
played with these animals and let them run around and explore much of
Hebb's family home. Obviously the life these rats were leading, and the
environments they were getting to explore, were much more complex and
stimulating than the standard barren laboratory cage, which might
include only some wood shavings to rest on, a water bottle and a food
tray. When these animals were later tested for their ability to learn
complex mazes (the rat equivalent of an intelligence test) they proved
to be much smarter than their littermates that had been raised in
boring cages where they had little to do or explore and where there
were no problems or interesting situations where they could exercise
their minds.

Shortly after this first set of tests on the pet rats, some of
Hebb's research associates repeated these experiments using dogs. They
compared the learning ability of pet reared dogs (who received all of
the stimulation and varied experiences that a typical family dog
normally has) with that of dogs reared in the usual barren kennels in
the lab. They found that the dogs reared in the more complex home
environment not only learned faster but seemed to be less fearful and
considerably less stressed in the testing situations.