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Swedish study found no link between modern breeds and their traditional work

INTRODUCTION People commonly assume that much of their pets personality is a remnant of the traditional work dogs of his breed once specialized in. The investigations over the last few years of Swedish scientist Kenth Svartberg suggest that this is not the case. Dog breeds are traditionally categorized in groups, according to historic function. Terrier breeds once hunted rodents; herding breeds chased and gathered livestock; gun dogs indicated the presence of game and retrieved the fallen fowl, showing no fear of gunfire at close range; working dogs guarded home and livestock and performed heavy labor like pulling carts. Svartberg found that modern purebred dogs grouped according to these categories simply had nothing more in common in terms of behavior than dogs in general. THE STUDY Svartberg studied more than 13,000 dogs of 31 different breeds from all the groups mentioned above. His validated test identifies several basic emotional traits -- playfulness, curiosity/fearlessness and sociability. He also attempted to measure aggression, but the test did not prove valid when compared to owners reports of real life behavior. In this model, a high playfulness dog is one who is enthusiastic about a game of tug or chase, while the curious/ fearless individual is eager to explore and not much bothered by new and potentially startling things popping up. The sociable dog enthusiastically greets and interacts with strangers. Some specific breeds scored slightly higher or lower than average on one or more of these qualities, though the majority of dogs of every breed scored firmly in the midrange of scores on the various traits. There was an equally wide range of behavior within each breed and much behavioral overlap among breeds. But the traditional groups did not as groups score higher on traits that we would associate with their original function. The terriers and herding dogs were no more likely to exhibit playfulness than the working breeds. The gun dogs showed no extra fearlessness, and the working dogs were no less sociable than the breeds of other groups.

There was an equally wide range of behavior within each breed and much behavioral overlap among breeds. But the traditional groups did not as groups score higher on traits that we would associate with their original function.

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Svartberg was able to group the 31 breeds studied into 4 different clusters of breeds, other than the historical groupings, that did seem to have some personality similarities. One such group of kindred spirits in terms of high scores for sociability, for example, includes Labrador Retrievers and American Staffordshire Terriers. Another cluster linked Golden Retrievers and Rottweilers. Svartberg attributes this lack of conservation of historical traits to the practice over the last century and a half since the advent of organized dog shows of breeding dogs primarily for appearance. IMPORTANCE FOR PET DOG OWNERS If Svartbergs finding is correct, that modern purebred dogs have maintained no detectable aptitude for the specialized work of their forebears, pet dog selection should clearly be made based on the personality of the individual dog, rather than on expectations about his behavior, based on ancestry. And if traditional traits have been so diluted as to be indiscernible in purebred dogs, we should certainly not expect to be able to predict them at all in dogs of mixed breeds. For a fuller discussion of this topic, see The Relevance of Breed in Selecting a Companion Dog by Janis Bradley, which is available at no cost from the NCRC website.

An NCRC commentary on: Svartberg, K. (2006) Breed-typical behaviour in dogsHistorical remnants or recent constructs? Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 96, 293313. (2005) A comparison of behaviour in test and in everyday life: evidence of three consistent boldness-related personality traits in dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 91, 103-108. (2002) Personality Traits in the Domestic Dog (Canis familiaris). Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 79, 133-155.

Last updated April 19 2013

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