Active and social life is associated with lower non-social fearfulness in pet dogs

Abstract

Behavioural problems are leading welfare issues in domestic dogs. In particular, anxiety-related behavioural problems, such as fearfulness and noise sensitivity are highly prevalent conditions that cause distress to fearful dogs. to better understand the environmental factors associated with nonsocial fear, including noise sensitivity, fear of novel situations, and fear of surfaces and heights, a large online survey including data on 13,700 Finnish pet dogs was performed by the dog owners. After fulfilling inclusion criteria, this data consisted of 9,613 dogs with fear of fireworks, 9,513 dogs with fear of thunder, 6,945 dogs with fear of novel situations, and 2,932 dogs with fear of surfaces and heights. Logistic regression analyses revealed that dogs with frequent non-social fear had experienced less socialisation during puppyhood, were more often neutered, had inexperienced owners, lived without conspecifics, participated less frequently in activities or training, and lived in more urban environments. In addition, we identified several breed differences, and a tendency of more common non-social fear in small dog breeds, which suggests a genetic background. Non-social fearfulness has a negative effect on well-being of the dogs. Our findings suggest that the socialisation and the living environment and the value of other dogs' company and owner interaction via activities and training may improve the well-being of the dogs. Fear and anxiety-related behavioural problems, such as fear of new situations, fear towards humans, and noise sensitivity, are major and global welfare problems of pet dogs that often lead to relinquishment or euthanasia 1-5. These behavioural problems have a negative effect on the wellbeing of both the dog and its owner, as owners are often less satisfied and are more weakly attached to dogs that show problematic behaviour 6-9. Fear and anxiety are used as terms to describe similar physiological signs of heightened arousal. Fear is a normal emotion that is found in all animal species. It is transient state elicited through threatening stimuli such as noise or smell 10-13. Anxiety can be described as the anticipation of a perceived threat and may be displayed without threatening stimulus 12,13. Fear can be classified into two categories based on the stimuli that causes fear. Social fear includes fear of other dogs or unfamiliar people, whereas non-social fear includes fear of different objects, loud noises and novel situations 14. The dog can show different fearful signs depending on the stimuli. For instance, dogs that are afraid of strangers usually avoid or withdraw, bark, or have a low tail position. Dogs that are fearful of novel situations usually pant, express a desire to leave the situation, or stay close to their owners 15. Fearfulness is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Canine fearfulness is highly heritable 16-23 and studies have already identified some candidate loci and genes that affect fearfulness 24-27. Environmental factors discovered by previous studies i...

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