Testing for human directed aggression in dogs

s 59 incorrectly to 2% of commands and 40% of commands elicited no response from the dogs. There was considerable variation across participants’ timing of reinforcement with the latency to deliver the first instance of reinforcement (secondary or primary) ranging from 0 to. 5 seconds. No significant difference was found between owners’ latency to deliver secondary or primary reinforcement (t (5) 5 21.66, P 5 0.16) or between the times taken to reinforce ‘sit’ or ‘down’ responses (t (5) 5 20.65, P 5 0.54) (first instance of reinforcement). Results showed a positive correlation between the time to the first instance of reinforcement and the proportion of incorrect responses (r (7)5 0.65, P5 0.12). We conclude that given the wide range of latencies to reinforcement, it is possible that the dogs’ task acquisition was suboptimal at times. Delays to reinforcement may also give room for unintentional feedback to occur, particularly as dogs are so receptive to human-given cues. Ongoing research will attempt to address these questions.