Major
Animal Science and Technology
Advisor
Dr. Bryan Dewsbury
Advisor Department
Biological Sciences
Date
5-2019
Keywords
shelter; dog; behavior; kubinyi; personality; scale
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Abstract
The aim of this study was to apply the dog personality scale used in the study, Dog and owner demographic characteristics and dog personality trait associations, (Kubinyi et al. 2009) to resident shelter dogs. The personality was originally developed and adapted for dog personality based on a 48 item Human Personality Inventory available from The Big Five. In the study, owners were asked to characterize their dogs using this scale, and in this study a researcher used the scale to characterize dogs at various animal shelters. The four main personality traits measured were calmness, boldness, trainability, and dog sociability, which were broad traits based on the 16 questions. The statistical method used to analyze the data collected from 80 dogs was “ “. The results showed that dogs scored “calm” were also scored “unassertive” and “cool-headed.” Additionally, dogs with these traits showed a negative correlation with traits like “active”, “energetic”, and “self-confidence”. Correlations like this were also present in the Kubinyi et al. 2009 study, and these results suggest that use of the personality scale was successful when a researcher unknown to the dogs characterized their personalities, which could allow use of the scale in other areas of dog behavior and personality – specifically in shelter behavior, adoption, and even medicine.