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Riedel, J.; Schumann, K.; Kaminski, J.; Call, J.; Tomasello, M.; 

Animal Behaviour. 2008. 75: 3, 1003-1014.

Although dogs, Canis familiaris, are skilful at responding to human social cues, the role of ontogeny in the development of these abilities has not been systematically examined. We studied the ability of very young dog puppies to follow human communicative cues and successfully find hidden food. In the first experiment we compared 6-, 8-, 16- and 24-week-old puppies in their ability to use pointing gestures or a marker as a cue. The results showed that puppies, independent of age, could use all human communicative cues, provided; only their success at using the marker cue increased with age. In the second and third experiments we investigated the flexibility of the puppies' understanding by reducing the degree to which they could use local enhancement to solve these problems. Here, subjects could not simply approach the hand of the experimenter and follow its direction to the correct location because cups were placed next to the dog instead of next to the experimenter. Six-week-old puppies readily used all of the human communicative cues provided. These findings support the hypothesis that domestication played a critical role in shaping the ability of dogs to follow human-given cues.

Masters, AM; McGreevy, PD;

Australian Veterinary Journal. 2008. 86: 1/2, 18-25.

Objective: To characterise Australian domestic dogkeeping practices relevant to canine health and welfare. Procedure: A quantitative questionnaire was distributed nationally through Dog's Life magazine. Data on management practices, household and dog demographics from 690 Australian dogs in 485 self-selected respondent households were analysed using ordinal and binary regression. Results: Several variables, relating to dog, owner and environment were associated with management practices. The size of the dog correlated positively with being fed outdoors (P<0.001), gameplaying (P=0.016) and being trained (P=0.001) and negatively with time spent indoors (P<0.001). Neutered dogs were more likely to be walked every day (P=0.027) and have had prior treatment for unwelcome behaviours (P<0.001) but less likely to be fed outdoors (P<0.013). The number of children in the household correlated with the dog being fed outdoors (P<0.001). The number of adult female humans in the household correlated with dog being neutered (P<0.001) whereas the reverse was linked to number of adult male humans in the household (P<0.013). Larger numbers of adult female humans in the household were associated with a higher incidence of prior treatment for unwelcome behaviours (P=0.020). The number of dogs in the household correlated negatively with dogs being walked every day (P<0.004) and gameplaying (P=0.001). Pure bred dogs were more likely to have attended puppy preschool than cross breeds (P=0.002). Conclusion: Reference to previous studies of Australian dog owners suggests that the current data are representative in terms of location of households, sex and age of dogs, however, the proportion of pure bred dogs in the current survey was surprisingly high. This was perhaps because respondents were from a particular sector of the Australian dog-owning population. It must be acknowledged that Dog's Life magazine readers may be atypical of Australian dog owners, nevertheless, the study demonstrates that variables relating to the dog, owner or environment can be used to characterise management styles.

McGreevy, PD; Masters, AM;

Applied Animal Behaviour Science.  2008. 109: 2/4, 320-328.

The potential risk factors associated with the canine behavioural problems, separation-related distress (SRD) and feed-related aggression (FRA) were evaluated by a questionnaire, distributed through Dog's Life magazine. Data on 690 Australian dogs in 485 self-selected respondent households showed that dogs acquired from friends or family had a higher probability of exhibiting low SRD scores than dogs acquired from pet shops (P=0.003). Male dogs had a higher probability of exhibiting high SRD scores (P=0.039) as did intact dogs (P=0.011). Dogs that generally engaged in game-playing with their owners had a higher probability of exhibiting low SRD scores (P=0.023). However, dogs that played games within the first 30 min of their owner arriving home had a higher probability of exhibiting high SRD scores (P=0.020) than dogs that did not. The probability of SRD also increased with the number of human adult females in the house (P=0.014). The following factors showed a positive association with a higher probability of FRA: mixed breeds (P=0.019), increasing dog age at acquisition (P=0.048), increasing number of females in the household (P=0.003), increasing number of dogs in the household (P=0.000) and feeding a dog treats during the owner's dinner (P=0.019).

Palmer, R.; Custance, D.;

Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 2008. 109: 2/4, 306-319.

It has been proposed that the dog-human relationship constitutes an infantile-like attachment. However, previous empirical support based on Ainsworth's Strange Situation test has proved inconclusive due to order effects inherent in the original procedure. In particular, these order effects compromise the ability to establish an essential facet of attachment: whether or not owners function as a secure base for their pet dogs. Order effects were counteracted in the present study by including a second condition in which the order of owner and stranger presence was counterbalanced. Hence, 38 adult dog-owner pairs were randomly placed in two conditions, both comprised of six 3-min episodes. In condition A, dogs entered an unfamiliar room with their owner; a stranger entered; the owner left the dog with the stranger; the dog was left alone in the room; the owner returned; and finally the dog was left with the stranger again. In condition B, the order in which owner and stranger were present was reversed. Secure-base effects were indicated in that the dogs explored, remained passive, played with the stranger and engaged in individual play more when in the presence of their owner than when left with the stranger or alone. Therefore, the dogs' behaviour provides evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the dog-human bond constitutes an attachment. The possible role of attachment in canine separation anxiety is briefly discussed.

Romantic Partners and Four-Legged Friends: An Extension of Attachment Theory to Relationships with Pets

Beck, Lisa; Madresh, Elizabeth A.

Anthrozoos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People & Animals, Volume 21, Number 1, March 2008 , pp. 43-56(14)

The founding principle of attachment theory (Bowlby 1973) is that a secure attachment to a caregiver is one of the first and most basic needs in an infant's life. Through the decades attachment theory has expanded its scope to include central adult relationships, especially between romantic partners, and has provided a useful framework for exploring relationships with friends and family members. We seek to further extend the application of the standard model of adult attachment to another interaction that people value: relationships with pets. We compared participants' reports of their relationships with pets and relationships with romantic partners in a web-based survey of 192 pet owners. Our adaptations of measures originally designed to measure insecurity in human relationships-the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ; Bartholomew and Horowitz 1991) and the Avoidance and Anxiety scales from the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised questionnaire (ECR-R; Fraley, Waller and Brennan 2000)-produced reliable measures of relationships with pets. The structure of dimensions of insecurity was similar for pet and partner relationships, but ratings of pet relationships correlated little or not at all with ratings of partner relationships. Surprisingly, relationships with pets were more secure on every measure. Our results provide initial evidence that attachment measures are indeed useful tools for investigating people's relationships with their pets. It appears that pets are a consistent source of attachment security; future research with attachment measures may be useful for understanding how the relationship with a pet affects other aspects of the owner's life, perhaps by buffering the experience of negative human social interactions.

Henry, S.; Richard-Yris, M. A.; Hausberger, M.;

Developmental Psychobiology. 2006. 48: 8, 712-718.

Whereas the way animals perceive human contact has been particularly examined in pet animals, a small amount of investigations has been done in domestic ungulates. It was nevertheless assumed that, as pet animals, non-aggressive forms of tactile contact were as well rewarding or positive for these species, even though the features of intraspecific relationships in pet animals and domestic ungulates may be to some extent different. We test here the hypothesis that horses may not consider physical handling by humans as a positive event. When comparing different early human-foal interactions, we found that early exposure to a motionless human enhanced slightly foals reactions to humans whereas forced stroking or handling in early life did not improve later human-foal relation. Foals that were assisted during their first suckling (e.g., brought to the dam's teat) even tended to avoid human approach at 2 weeks, and physical contact at 1 month of age. We argue that interspecies differences may exist in how tactile stimulation is perceived. It may be important for the establishment of a bond that a young animal is active in the process and able, through its behavioural responses, to help define what is positive for it. This way of investigation may have important general implications in how we consider the development of social relations, both within and between species.

Alie, K.; Davis, B. W.; Fielding, W. J.; Galindo Maldonado, F.;

Anthrozoos.  2007. 20: 2, 143-154.

This paper reports on the findings of interviews on attitudes towards pet care with 241 heads of households in Roseau, the capital of The Commonwealth of Dominica. Parrots and dogs were the two most preferred animals, and snakes were least liked; however, few respondents (0.8%) kept parrots as pets. Dogs were kept in 39% of households and cats in 28%. Over 90% of respondents thought that Roseau had a "roaming dog problem," and 71% reported roaming dogs, amongst other roaming animals, in their neighborhoods. Almost a third of cats and dogs were untrained and almost 58% of dog carers only took their pets to the veterinarian when they thought they were sick. It is proposed that most dog carers are "passive" - have little interaction with their dogs. Most respondents were ignorant of the laws concerning dog ownership and animal welfare. Respondents only wanted to adopt dogs with certain characteristics and most were unwilling to pay for an adopted dog. The findings from this study indicate that the community needs to be better educated in animal welfare.

Ley, J. M.; Bennett, P. C.; 

Anthrozoos.  2007. 20: 2, 113-124.

The study of personality is well established in human psychology, with trait theory being perhaps the most widely accepted of the personality theories. Animal personality research has utilized trait theory to identify personality factors in a wide variety of animal species. However, it has been somewhat hampered by attempting to apply human personality dimensions to animals rather than investigating the depth and breadth of personality in individual animal species. Research into animal personality offers human personality researchers the chance to explore the evolution and development of human personality. This can best be done by exploring the expression of personality in other species without restriction to human personality models. This paper suggests that the dog, Canis familiaris, is a suitable species to begin with because of its unique place in human society, its history and familiarity with humans, and its genetic plasticity. A potential structure of canine personality is proposed.

  Journal Society and Animals , 10, 1 , 2002, 93-105

Lynn A. Planchon, Donald I. Templer, Shelley Stokes and Jacqueline Keller

This study found that death depression, general depression, and positive attitudes toward, and attachment to, companion animals were associated with greater grief following the death of cats and dogs both in a veterinary client group who had recently lost their companion animals and in a college student group with a history of companion animal loss. The correlations of both the above variables and the demographic and death circumstance variables tended to be higher with the veterinary clients. Death of a dog by accident as opposed to illness correlated .81 with extended grief in the veterinary clients. Not having their dogs euthanized correlated .70 with extended grief in this group as well.

M. Geraldine Gage, Ralph Holcomb

Family Relations, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 103-105

A survey mailed to 1,650 mid-life couples resulted in a subsample of 242 couples whose pet had died during the 3 years prior to the survey. Among the subsample who reported pet loss, about half of wives and more than a quarter of husbands reported they were "quite" or "extremely" disturbed by the death of a family pet. For husbands, pet loss was rated about as stressful as the loss of a close friendship, for wives about as stressful as losing touch with their married children. There was consensus on the rating of the stressfulness of pet loss by fewer than half of the couples.