Benchmark study tracks trends in dog behavior
Virginia Tech
image:
A new study that seeks to understand the link between dog behavior and health compiles four years of owner-reported data from over 47,000 dogs.
view moreCredit: Photo courtesy of Courtney Sexton.
A new Virginia Tech study published in PLOS One establishes a crucial baseline for understanding dog behavior on a large scale.
The research, led by Courtney Sexton, a postdoctoral associate in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, and her colleague Yuhuan Li from the University of Washington, utilized four years of owner-reported data from over 47,000 dogs in the Dog Aging Project, a large-scale initiative involving over 40 institutions.
"Most importantly, with these data, we're excited to now have a starting point from which we can continue to follow changes in the behaviors of tens of thousands of dogs as they age, which will ultimately help us understand how behavior and health are linked," Sexton said.
This study's power lies in its sheer size.
Sexton said, "When you have a data set this big, you really do have power in numbers. While we can't understand all the factors, when we find statistical significance, there is likely something there worth thinking about in its real-world context."
The original motivation: Find out how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the well-being of our canine companions. The researchers analyzed four years of owner-reported data from 2020-23, specifically examining trends in fear, attention/excitability, aggression, and trainability.
It turns out, dogs are adaptable.
"We saw that certain factors, such as a dog's life stage, sex, and size had some influence on their behavior," said Sexton. "Interestingly, we found that throughout the COVID-19 pandemic time period, there were not substantial changes in dogs' overall behavioral profiles from year to year despite what we might have expected given the changes in environment and routines that many were experiencing at that time."
The study did, however, reveal one small but notable exception: trainability. Dogs enrolled in the study after 2020 had lower average trainability scores. This was in contrast to dogs already enrolled in 2020 as adults that likely benefited from pre-pandemic training experience.
While the data doesn't offer a definitive cause, researchers speculate that the pandemic's unique circumstances — such as more dogs being adopted from shelters or owners being more stressed and less able to dedicate time to training — could be contributing factors.
“What was interesting was that the difference in reported trainability between the first year and the last year was the smallest of any in the averages,” said Sexton. “It’s a small statistical significance but could show that dogs, or their owners, are bouncing back.”
Future work will explore how factors such as a dog's location or their health status might influence behavior over time. The goal is to better prepare dogs and their owners for whatever life throws at them, whether it's a pandemic or just the challenges of everyday life.
Journal
PLOS One
Article Publication Date
9-Sep-2025
The pandemic may have influenced the trainability of dogs, as reported by their owners
Age, breed, sex, and size were also associated with differing dog behavior, per survey of almost 50,000 owners
image:
Establishing dogs' baseline behaviors across categories such as Fear, Attention, Aggression, and Trainability can help understand how behavioral changes affect dogs as they age.
view moreCredit: Bruce Warrington, Unsplash, CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
Dogs reportedly became harder to train as the pandemic progressed, though this seemed to improve by the time it was ending, according to a study publishing September 10, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS One by Courtney Sexton of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, U.S., Yuhuan Li of the University of Washington, U.S., and colleagues.
Understanding dog behavior can help owners to improve their relationships with their pets and to monitor their health and welfare. To investigate general patterns of dog behavior, researchers analyzed data from a survey completed by 47,444 U.S. dog owners between 2020 and 2023, while enrolling their pets in a long-term study of dog health, the Dog Aging Project.
Average trainability scores — measuring dogs’ responsiveness to training, and comfort with being touched — were higher in dogs included in the 2020 survey intake, but lower in 2021, 2022, and 2023 — perhaps reflecting the difficulties of training a “pandemic puppy” acquired early in the pandemic. Notably, by 2023, those averages did start inching back closer to the 2020 scores, meaning dogs (and owners) may have started getting the hang of training routines as the world returned to “normal”.
In reviewing average behaviors across four main categories including fear, attention, aggression, and trainability in each year, the researchers also found other factors associated with dogs’ behaviors as reported by owners. On average, mixed breed dogs in the study population tended to be more fearful, needed more attention and displayed more aggression-related behaviors than single-breed dogs, according to their owners. The authors suggest this difference might be because mixed breed dogs are more likely to have been adopted from shelters and rescues and therefore may have experienced a stressful or traumatic past.
Age, sex, and body size were also associated with differences in dogs’ behavior. Puppy owners reported that they required more attention, and were less fearful and aggressive, but also less trainable, than dogs at other life stages. On average, male dogs tended to be less fearful, more aggressive, and more difficult to train than females. Smaller dogs also tended to be more fearful, more aggressive and less trainable than larger dogs.
Dog owners that participated in the survey in 2020 reported higher levels of aggression in their pets compared to owners who completed the survey in 2023. This might be due to stress in the dogs’ home environment during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as fewer opportunities for social interaction during lockdowns.
This study is the first to analyze average behavioral characteristics from a large-scale survey that will continue to follow the same dogs as they age. The authors say that their analysis provides important baseline data that can be used to track changes in dog behavior over time, which will ultimately help them assess how behavior and health are linked.
The authors add: “In this study we saw that certain factors, such as a dog's life stage, sex, and size had some influence on their behavior. Interestingly, we found that throughout the COVID-19 pandemic time period, there were not substantial changes in dogs' overall behavioral profiles from year-to-year, despite what we might have expected given the changes in environment and routines that many were experiencing at that time. Most importantly, with these data, we're excited to now have a starting point from which we can continue to follow changes in the behaviors of tens of thousands of dogs as they age, which will ultimately help us understand how behavior and health are linked.”
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: http://plos.io/45PXsvr
Citation: Li Y, Sexton CL, DAP Consortium, Fitzpatrick A, Ruple A (2025) An analysis of behavioral characteristics and enrollment year variability in 47,444 dogs entering the Dog Aging Project from 2020 to 2023. PLoS One 20(9): e0330257. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0330257
Author countries: U.S.
Funding: This research is based on publicly available data collected by the Dog Aging Project, under U19 grant AG057377 (PI: Daniel Promislow) from the National Institute on Aging, a part of the National Institutes of Health, and by additional grants and private donations, including generous support from the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, the Tiny Foundation Fund at Myriad Canada, and the WoodNext Foundation.
Journal
PLOS One
Method of Research
Survey
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
An analysis of behavioral characteristics and enrollment year variability in 47,444 dogs entering the Dog Aging Project from 2020 to 2023
Article Publication Date
10-Sep-2025
No comments:
Post a Comment