Why you can’t buy your dog’s loyalty with treats

TO curry favour with the family dog, you might think it’s a good idea to feed it the odd scrap from the dinner table.

But there is no evidence that a dog will remember if you’re generous or selfish with food, new research has revealed.

Scientists got six dogs to watch interactions between two people and another dog. One ‘generous’ person fed the dog and a ‘selfish’ one did not.

Afterwards, the six dogs were allowed to choose which of the two humans to approach. In a second phase of the experiment the dogs directly interacted with two researchers, who again either fed them or refused to give them food. This was repeated four times.

The results showed that on the whole the dogs did not appear to remember – or seem to care – which person had been generous in both situations. A team from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna told the journal Plos One: ‘Our main finding is that dogs, at the group level, did not differentiate between a generous and selfish partner after indirect or direct experience with the humans.’

They said their research did not support the view that dogs can remember a human handler’s feeding ‘reputation’.

However, the team said further studies were needed with a larger group of dogs.

They also admitted that their findings could have been different if the dogs had felt very hungry during the experiments.

‘In this study, there was only a small cost of not receiving a food reward if the animals chose the selfish partner,’ they wrote.

‘Further, the trainer fed the subject every time he or she went back to the starting point for the next trial and the animals were not food-deprived before the test, thus they may not have been very motivated to choose the generous partner.’