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We describe the relationships between dog owners’ personality attributes (assessed via questionnaire), their behaviours and the dog’s behaviours observed during brief dog-owner and dog-stranger interactions (N = 78). Interactions comprised the owner commanding the dog to sit, and the stranger showing a ball to the restrained dog and then hiding it. Owners scoring higher on neuroticism and openness used more commands (gestural and verbal) when asking the dog to sit, and the dogs of owners higher on neuroticism obeyed with a longer latency and spent more time looking at the stranger. More extraverted owners praised their dog more, and it took longer for their dogs to look at the stranger but they spent more time looking at the stranger, whereas dogs of more agreeable owners spent more time looking at the ball. Based on these results we conclude that some aspects of owners’ personality appear to be tied to their dog’s attentional concerns. Keywords: dog-human interaction; personality; multivariate statistical methods

Partner choice is strongly affected by similarity in physical and psychological characteristics. Although there is a popular belief that dogs share similar personality characteristics with their owners, no studies have yet addressed the topic. Here, we tested for associations between the dog and owner personality in two countries (Austria and Hungary) and found significant positive correlations between owners and their dogs in all the five investigated personality dimensions (neuroticism, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness). This similarity could not be attributed solely to the owners’ self-projection, since the similarity in the first four dimensions was also significant when an independent peer person assessed the dog instead of the owner. The similarity was not affected by the length of ownership, however, we found cultural differences in the correlation pattern; more and stronger correlations were found in the Hungarian sample. Moreover, in multi-dog households the dogs’ similarity patterns complement each other, suggesting possible differences in the dogs’ role. Our results provide the first evidence that dogs do resemble their owners suggesting potential applied utility as well as indicating that dog–owner relationship could be a useful model of human social relationships.

Modern dog breeding has given rise to more than 400 breeds differing both in morphology and behaviour. Traditionally, kennel clubs have utilized an artificial category system based on the morphological similarity and historical function of each dog breed. Behavioural comparisons at the breed-group level produced ambiguous results as to whether the historical function still has an influence on the breed-typical behaviour. Recent genetic studies have uncovered genetic relatedness between dog breeds, which can be independent from their historical function and may offer an alternative explanation of behavioural differences among breeds. This exploratory study aimed to investigate the behaviour profiles of 98 breeds, and the behavioural differences among conventional breed groups based on historical utility and among genetic breed clusters. Owners of 5733 dogs (98 breeds) filled out an online questionnaire in German. Breed trait scores on trainability, boldness, calmness and dog sociability were calculated by averaging the scores of all individuals of the breed. Breeds were ranked on the four traits and a cluster analysis was performed to explore behavioural similarity between breeds. We found that two of the behaviour traits (trainability and boldness) significantly differed both among the conventional and the genetic breed groups. Using the conventional classification we revealed that Herding dogs were more trainable than Hounds, Working dogs, Toy dogs and Non-sporting dogs; Sporting dogs were also more trainable than Non-sporting dogs. In parallel, Terriers were bolder than Hounds and Herding dogs. Regarding genetic relatedness, breeds with ancient Asian or African origin (Ancient breeds) were less trainable than breeds in the Herding/sighthound cluster and the Hunting breeds. Breeds in the Mastiff/terrier cluster were bolder than the Ancient breeds, the breeds in the Herding/sighthound cluster and the Hunting breeds. Six breed clusters were created on the basis of behavioural similarity. All the conventional and genetic groups had representatives in at least three of these clusters. Thus, the behavioural breed clusters showed poor correspondence to both the functional and genetic categorisation, which may reflect the effect of recent selective processes. Behavioural breed clusters can provide a more reliable characterization of the breeds’ current typical behaviour.

Studies about the behaviours of mixed-breed dogs are rare, although mixed-breeds represent the majority of the world’s dog population. We have conducted two surveys to investigate the behavioural, demographic, and dog keeping differences between purebred and mixed-breed companion dogs. Questionnaire data were collected on a large sample of dogs living in Germany (N = 7,700 purebred dogs representing more than 200 breeds, and N = 7,691 mixed-breeds). We found that according to their owners, mixed-breeds were (1) less calm, (2) less sociable toward other dogs, and (3) showed more problematic behaviour than purebreds (p < 0.001 for all). Mixed-breeds and purebreds were similar in trainability and boldness scores. However, twelve out of 20 demographic and dog keeping factors differed between purebred and mixed-breed dogs, and two factors showed considerable (> 10%) differences: neutering was more frequent among mixed-breeds, and they were acquired at older ages than purebreds (p < 0.001 for both), which could result in the observed behaviour differences. After controlling for the distribution of the demographic and dog keeping factors, we found that mixed-breeds were (1) more trainable than purebreds, (2) less calm, and (3) showed more problematic behaviour than purebreds (p < 0.001 for all). We discuss that these differences at least partly might be due to selective forces. Our results suggest that instead of being the “average” dogs, mixed-breeds represent a special group with characteristic behavioural traits.

The study of dog personality has a long history. In this chapter, we present an overview of the concepts and methods applied to dog personality by reviewing the most recent experimental investigations. Several genetic and environmental factors have been identified that influence dogs’ personality. Understanding the underlying genetic and developmental mechanisms of the dog as a natural animal model for human social behaviour broadens our possibilities to rely on an experimental approach to personality. The research on genetic effects and gene–environment interaction may enable owners and trainers to choose genetically suitable individuals for specific environments.

Research using the two-object choice paradigm showed that dogs prefer the object associated with the happy human emotion. However, they provided rather ambiguous results regarding the negative emotions. We assumed that differences between the dogs’ and owners’ interest towards the ‘negative’ object might be responsible for this. In our experiment, dogs observed their owner expressing different emotions towards two uniform plastic bottles. Five dog groups were tested based on the condition they received: (1) happy versus neutral, (2) happy versus disgust, (3) neutral versus disgust and (4–5) neutral vs neutral, as control groups. Contrary to previous studies using free choice paradigm, we used a task-driven approach. After the demonstration, the dogs had to retrieve one object to the owner. The dogs’ performance in the two neutral–neutral groups did not differ from the chance level. In contrast, subjects were able to distinguish between the happy and neutral expression of the owner: they both approached and fetched the ‘happy’ object. In the happy–disgusted and neutral–disgusted groups, the dogs approached the bottles randomly, suggesting that they found the ‘disgusting’ and ‘neutral’ objects equally attractive. Nevertheless, the dogs preferentially retrieved the object marked with the relatively more positive emotion (happy or neutral) to the owner in both conditions. Our results demonstrate that dogs are able to recognize which is the more positive among two emotions, and in a fetching task situation, they override their own interest in the ‘disgusting’ object and retrieve what the owner prefers.

Clever Dog Lab, Nussgasse 4, 1090 Vienna, Austria*Corresponding author: Phone: (361) 381-2179; borbala.turcsan@gmail.comPersonality matching in owner-dog dyads is relativelyunderstudied. The current research takes a cross-speciesapproach to investigate the relationship between the person-alitytraitsoftheownersandoftheirdogsandtheassociationbetween ‘‘relationship satisfaction’’ and dog/owner person-ality traits. 120 adult owners with one dog were asked to fillout two personality questionnaires and to rate their relation-ship with their dog on a 10-point scale. We compared theowners’ and the dogs’ personality assessment in extraver-sion, neuroticism, agreeableness and openness traits usingSpearman rank order correlations. Univariate GLM wasusedtoexaminetheeffectsofthehumananddogpersonalitytraits on the relationship satisfaction. Significant positivecorrelations were found between the owners’ and dogs’ per-sonality assessment in neuroticism and extraversion. Therelationship satisfaction reported by the owner was relatedonly to the dogs’ personality traits (neuroticism, extraver-sion), none of the human traits were associated with it.However, the assessment of the dog’s personality may bebiased by the owners’ tendency to project their own charac-teristics onto their dogs. To address this issue, we asked 26owners with more than one dog to assess both their firstand second dog. Owners assessed their first dog similarlytothemselvesinneuroticism,butthecorrelationinextraver-sion was not significant. In the case of the second dog, thecorrelation in neuroticism was negative, while in extraver-sion it was positive. However, the first and second dog didnot differ from each other in either personality traits. Thesefindings support that owners do not project indiscriminatelytheir own characteristics onto their dogs. Our results showa convergence between the neuroticism and extraversiontraits of dogs and their owners, which might be related tothenumberofdogsinthehouseholdandtheorderofacquir-ing the dogs.Key words: personality; owner-dog dyads; relationshipsatisfaction

The aim of this study was to analyze the relationships between four personality traits (calmness, trainability, dog sociability and boldness) of dogs (Canis familiaris) and dog and owner demographics on a large sample size with 14,004 individuals. German speaking dog owners could characterize their dog by filling out a form on the Internet. There were five demographic variables for dogs and nine for owners. Two statistical methods were used for investigating the associations between personality and demographic traits: the more traditional general linear methods and regression trees that are ideal for analyzing nonlinear relationships in the structure of the data. The results showed that calmness is influenced primarily by the dog’s age, the neutered status, the number of different types of professional training courses (e.g. obedience, agility) the dog had experienced and the age of acquisition. The least calm dogs were less than 2.5 years old, neutered and acquired after the first 12 weeks of age, while the calmest dogs were older than 6.9 years. Trainability was affected primarily by the training experiences, the dog’s age, and the purpose of keeping the dog. The least trainable dogs had not received professional training at all and were older than 3 years. The most trainable dogs were those who participated in three or more types of professional training. Sociability toward conspecifics was mainly determined by the age, sex, training experience and time spent together. The least sociable dogs were older than 4.8 years and the owners spent less than 3 h with the dog daily. The most sociable dogs were less than 1.5 years old. Males were less sociable toward their conspecifics than females. Boldness was affected by the sex and age of the dog and the age of acquisition. The least bold were females acquired after the age of 1 year or bred by the owner. The boldest dogs were males, acquired before the age of 12 weeks, and were younger than 2 years old. Other variables, including the owner’s gender, age, education, previous experience with dogs, the number of people and dogs in the household, and purpose of keeping the dogs had minor, but detectable effects. The results suggest that on-line questionnaires are a very effective means for collecting data about dog behavior, especially if owners are motivated by instant feedback. However, note that the characteristics of dogs in the present study were reported by the owners, and the associations with the traits do not necessarily represent a causal relationship.

In humans, age-related changes in personality occur in a non-random fashion with respect to their direction, timing, and magnitude. In dogs, there are still gaps in our knowledge about the detailed dynamics of age-related personality changes. We analysed the personality of 217 Border collies aged from 0.5 to 15 years both cross-sectionally and longitudinally using a test battery, to specify age periods when changes most prominently occur, assess the magnitude of changes, and analyse individual differences in personality change. We found that similar to humans, changes in personality occur unevenly during the dogs’ life course, however, their dynamics seems to be specific for each trait. Activity-independence decreased mostly from puppyhood (0.5–1 years) to adolescence (> 1–2 years), then continued to decrease in a slowing rate. Novelty seeking did not change markedly until middle age (> 3–6 years), then showed a steady linear decrease. Problem orientation increased strongly until middle age then showed no marked changes in later age periods. We also revealed individual differences in personality change over time, and showed that a few individuals with potential age-related impairments significantly affected the general age trajectory of some traits. These results raise caution against the over-generalisation of global age trends in dogs.