Inadequate socialisation, inactivity, and urban living environment are associated with social fearfulness in pet dogs

Abstract

problematic behaviours are severe welfare issues for one of the world's most popular pets, the domestic dog. one of the most prevalent behavioural problem that causes distress to dogs is social fearfulness, meaning fear of conspecifics or unfamiliar people. To identify demographic and environmental factors associated with fear of dogs and strangers, logistic regression was utilised with a large dataset of 6,000 pet dogs collected through an owner-filled behavioural survey. Social fearfulness was associated with several factors, including urban environment, poor socialisation during puppyhood, infrequent participation in training and other activities, small body size, female sex, and neutering. in addition, we identified several breed differences, suggesting a genetic contribution to social fearfulness. These findings highlight the role of inadequate socialisation, inactivity, and urban living environmental in fear-related behavioural problems in dogs. Improvements in the management and breeding practices of dogs could, therefore, enhance the welfare of man's best friend. open Scientific RepoRtS | (2020) 10:3527 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60546-w www.nature.com/scientificreports www.nature.com/scientificreports/ ResultsStudy cohort and demographics. We studied the demographic and environmental factors associated with fear of dogs and fear of strangers in datasets of 5,973 and 5,932 dogs, respectively. In the 'fear of dogs' data, the numbers of non-fearful and fearful dogs were 4,806 and 1,167, respectively. The age of the dogs in this dataset varied from 2 months to 17 years (mean age 4.6 years). In the 'fear of strangers' data, the numbers of non-fearful and fearful dogs were 5,036 and 896, respectively. The age of the dogs in this dataset varied from 2 months to 17 years (mean age 4.7 years). 51% of the dogs were females in both datasets. More detailed demographics and the lists of included breeds and the number of individuals per breed are presented in the Supplementary Table S1.

Genetic testing of dogs predicts problem behaviors in clinical and nonclinical samples

“…Males are at increased risk of being more aggressive than females [30][31][32][33][34][35] . Here, neutering of both sexes was positively correlated with behavioral diagnosis, consistent with previous reports 20,35 . The modeling analysis has additional detail for neuter status, but we do not stress this variable because only a small percent of our cohort was intact.…”

“…There is no consensus on the effects of sex on canine anxiety/separation traits. Females are known to have increased risk of developing fear of unfamiliar humans and dogs 20,30 . Intact females have increased fear of dogs compared to intact males, but levels are increased further -and the sexes are indistinguishable -when they are neutered 20 .…”

“…Females are known to have increased risk of developing fear of unfamiliar humans and dogs 20,30 . Intact females have increased fear of dogs compared to intact males, but levels are increased further -and the sexes are indistinguishable -when they are neutered 20 . Males are at increased risk of being more aggressive than females [30][31][32][33][34][35] .…”

“…In a study partnered with the present work, we compared the scans of diverse behaviors with and without correction for body mass. The correlation of body size and behavior in dogs has thus been observed in behavioral [17][18][19][20] and genetic studies 11,12 . Based on biological relevance, we previously argued that behavior-body size correlations are due to pleiotropy 12 (rather than population structure 21 ).…”

Genome scans of dog behavior implicate a gene network underlying psychopathology in mammals, including humans

“…The genetic architecture of canine behavior -and its pleiotropy with body size -is the result of strong positive selection and weak negative selection under domestication. Canine body size is known to be correlated with behavior based on behavioral and genetic evidence 5,6,[62][63][64] . For instance, analysis of 32,000 C-BARQ-phenotyped dogs from 82 breeds showed that behavioral clustering of breeds was explained more by body size than breed relatedness 63 .…”