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The study compared the performance of shelter dogs and family pets in a battery of behavioral temperament tests, in order to evaluate whether there is an association between the living conditions in shelters (social and spatial restriction) and alterations of behavior. Thirty half-breed house dogs were given a battery of four temperament tests: sociability and interspecific fear, trainability, interspecific aggression, and non-social fear. Results show that, compared to family pets, shelter dogs remained close to the experimenter for a longer period during the sociability test and their scores were significantly higher in the non-social fear test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this work is to study the effects of housing conditions, shelter versus family house, on gaze response as well as on sociability and fear-appeasement (tail and ears down and crouching) behaviors. Also, the objective is to analyze whether there is a relationship between these behaviors. Eight shelter and nine family dogs, adult, both sexes and mixed breeds were assessed in a sociability test in which dogs were exposed to the presence of an unknown human who acted passively and a communicative task in which a person remain near a visible but unreachable source of food. Results showed that, in both tests, shelter dogs showed more fear-appeasement behaviors than family dogs but there were no differences in their approaching levels to the human. Moreover, the groups didn't show differences in their gaze response towards the human face. However, gaze duration was longer in the communicative task, where food was present, than in the sociability test, in both groups. In conclusion, housing in a shelter could modify some responses of the dogs related to fear-appeasement towards humans affecting the quality of the bond between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]