Puppy performance during a behavioral standardized test: influence of breed groups based on genetic relatedness and environment

The scientific literature now suggests that conducting behavioral tests at 7 weeks of age is too early to reliably predict the temperament and personality of a dog. The potential for evaluation dog-human interaction and predisposition to learn of puppies could be however interesting at this stage of age. In order to test if breed genetic relatedness groups (Parker et al., 2007) or environment could influence puppy’s score after a behavior test, 90 puppies from 13 breed were tested. Scores were evaluated for two aggregate indicators (response to a person and to object and noise) as previously described (Alberghina et al., 2020). Mean scores were analyzed by proportional odds model for ordinal logistic regression where single variables for each test (genetic relatedness group, sex, litter size, maternal experience and behavior, environment) were specified in an additive model. The Mastiff-Terrier and Modern groups showed a tendency to have lower scores in “dog- human interaction” indicator. In the “learning redisposition”indicator, Mountain group tended to have lower scores than other groups while stimulating environment was positively associated with high scores. Our results support the hypothesis that genetic relatedness group and environment influences the performance of seven-week-old puppies on a behavioral test. The most obvious limitation in this research was that of a small sample size, a limitation that prevented a multifactorial analysis of variance, covering all genetic and environmental factors. These preliminary findings have direct implications for dog breeders illustrating that a stimulating environment of dam and puppies could influence learning predisposition in dogs.