Dog Owners’ Interaction Styles: Their Components and Associations with Reactions of Pet Dogs to a Social Threat

The bond dogs develop with their owner received increased attention in the last years but no study aimed at characterizing the way in which owners interact with their dogs in their daily life and how this might influence dog behavior. In order to examine how dog owners interact with their dogs, we first analyzed the behavior of 220 dog owners in 8 different standardized situations involving the owner-dog dyad. We extracted 3 behavioral factors related to Owner Warmth, Owner Social Support and Owner Control. Further, we investigated whether owner personality, gender and age are associated with these three factors. Results indicated that older owners scored lower in Owner Warmth and in Owner Social Support and higher in Owner Control than younger owners. Furthermore, owners scoring high in Owner Control scored lower in the personality trait Openness and owners scoring high in Owner Social Support scored lower in the personality trait Conscientiousness. Finally, we also analyzed whether the dogs´ reaction to an unfamiliar woman’s threatening approach was associated with the owners’ interaction styles. Results showed that dogs that searched for proximity of their owners during the threatening situation had owners scoring higher in Owner Warmth, as compared to dogs that reacted more autonomously, approaching the unfamiliar experimenter. Analogies between dog-owner interaction styles and human parenting styles are discussed considering the implications of the present findings for human social psychology as well as the practical relevance for dog welfare and human safety

DNA methylation patterns of behavior-related gene promoter regions dissect the gray wolf from domestic dog breeds

A growing body of evidence highlights the relationship between epigenetics, especially DNA methylation, and population divergence as well as speciation. However, little is known about how general the phenomenon of epigenetics-wise separation of different populations is, or whether population assignment is, possible based on solely epigenetic marks. In the present study, we compared DNA methylation profiles between four different canine populations: three domestic dog breeds and their ancestor the gray wolf. Altogether, 79 CpG sites constituting the 65 so-called CpG units located in the promoter regions of genes affecting behavioral and temperamental traits (COMT, HTR1A, MAOA, OXTR, SLC6A4, TPH1, WFS1)-regions putatively targeted during domestication and breed selection. Methylation status of buccal cells was assessed using EpiTYPER technology. Significant inter-population methylation differences were found in 52.3% of all CpG units investigated. DNA methylation profile-based hierarchical cluster analysis indicated an unambiguous segregation of wolf from domestic dog. In addition, one of the three dog breeds (Golden Retriever) investigated also formed a separate, autonomous group. The findings support that population segregation is interrelated with shifts in DNA methylation patterns, at least in putative selection target regions, and also imply that epigenetic profiles could provide a sufficient basis for population assignment of individuals

Overimitation in Dogs: Is There a Link to the Quality of the Relationship with the Caregiver?

Overimitation, the copying of causally irrelevant or non-functional actions, is well-known from humans but completely absent in other primates. Recent studies from our lab have provided evidence for overimitation in canines. Previously, we found that half of tested pet dogs copied their human caregiver’s irrelevant action, while only few did so when the action was demonstrated by an unfamiliar experimenter. Therefore, we hypothesized that dogs show overimitation as a result of socio-motivational grounds. To test this more specifically, here we investigated how the relationship with the caregiver influenced the eagerness to overimitate. Given the high variability in the tendency to overimitate their caregiver, we hypothesized that not only familiarity but also relationship quality influences whether dogs faithfully copy their caregiver. For this purpose, on the one hand we measured the overimitation tendency (with the same test as in the two studies before) and on the other hand the relationship quality between the dogs and their caregivers. Although we found no significant correlation between the two test results, our data might suggest that, on average, dogs who overimitated seemed to show more referential and affiliative behaviours towards the owner than dogs who showed less or no copying of the irrelevant action. Notably, as a group, those dogs that showed the highest level of copying accuracy of the irrelevant action showed the highest level of gazing and synchronization towards the owner

Partial rewarding during clicker training does not improve naïve dogs' learning speed and induces a pessimistic-like affective state

International audienceClicker training is considered a welfare-friendly way of teaching novel behaviors to animals because it is mostly based on the positive reinforcement. However, trainers largely vary in their way of applying this training technique. According to the most, a reward (e.g., food) should follow every click, while others claim that dogs learn faster when the reward is sometimes omitted. One argument against the use of partial rewarding is that it induces frustration in the animal, raising concerns over its welfare consequences. Here, we investigated the effect of partial rewarding not only on training efficacy (learning speed), but also on dogs' affective state. We clicker-trained two groups of dogs: one group received food after every click while the other group received food only 60% of the time. Considering previous evidence of the influencing role of personality on reactions to frustrated expectations, we included measurements of dogs' emotional reactivity. We compared the number of trials needed to reach a learning criterion and their pessimistic bias in a cognitive bias test. No difference between the two groups emerged in terms of learning speed; however, dogs that were partially rewarded during clicker training showed a more pessimistic bias than dogs that were continuously rewarded. Generally, emotional reactivity was positively associated with a more pessimistic bias. Partial rewarding does not improve training efficacy, but it is associated with a negatively valenced affective state, bringing support to the hypothesis that partial rewarding might negatively affect dogs' welfare

Cognition in Context

The theory behind the evolution of cognition frames that cognitive processes have evolved in response to the complexity and challenges posed by the physical and social environment. To date, cognitive abilities have been mostly studied under controlled laboratory conditions that facilitate replicability and high-resolution measurements (Cauchoix, Hermer, Chaine, & Morand-Ferron, 2017). Yet, under these circumstances, cognitive abilities are evaluated in relatively stable and homogeneous situations that hardly match the species’ natural environments (Niemelä and Dingemanse, 2014). Thus, results drawn from these controlled studies do not necessarily scale to the range of cognitive processes displayed by individuals in naturalistic settings (Cauchoix, Chaine, & Barragan-Jason, 2020)