New research shows that the way you “parent” your dog has an effect on how it behaves as a pet. Dogs who are responsive to their owners’ needs and behaviors will become more social, secure, and intelligent.
Styles and options for parenting They are well-knownInfluence the development and growth of children. Researchers are discovering more about the similar relationship between pet owners and their pets.
The researchers recruited 48 dog-owners and their pets. They completed a questionnaire about pet parenting and then took part in three behavioral tests in the laboratory. These tests assessed the attachments and interactions of the dogs with their owners.
“We discovered that patterns of behavior and cognition in dogs can be predicted by pet parenting.” says animal behaviorist Monique UdellOregon State University
“This important finding is because it shows that dogs who are well-informed and attentive to their needs will be more secure and resilient than those who don’t.
Researchers classified the dog owners based on their initial surveys into three types, similar to human parenting research: authoritative (high expectation, high responsiveness), autoritarian (high responseness, low expectations) and permissive(low expectations, high responsiveness).
The three behavioral tests covered attachment (how the dog responded to its owner during close interactions), sociability (how the dog responded when a stranger and its owner traded places with one another in the testing room, and problem-solving(challenging the dog to get a treat from a puzzle with either no interaction at all or verbal encouragement and gestures from the owner).
Dogs with authoritative owners had higher levels of secure attachment, and were more socially and sensitive to social context than dogs with permissive or authoritarian owners. The authoritative group was the only one that solved the puzzle task.
This study is in line with some aspects of previous researchIn parents and children; in particular, that children who have authoritative parents are more likely show secure attachment. This is thought to be due to the consistent, reliable support they receive.
“This research suggests that the pet dog-human caregiver bond could be functionally as well as emotionally similar to that between a human parent, and their child.” Lauren Brubaker, a behavioral scientistOregon State University
The research opens up some interesting new questions – why, for example, did the dogs with permissive owners respond to the social cues of the stranger they were with but not their owner in one of the tests?
However, for now, the study is sufficient to demonstrate that there is a relationship between how we approach dogs as owners and how their dogs behave.
Researchers write that “more research is needed in this area, especially replications with larger samples and across different cultures.” Publication of paper.
“However, our findings suggest that in the sampled population pre-existing dog–owner relationship quality served as a significant predictor of dog behavior across all three domains.”
The research was published in Animal Cognition.
