‘Conscientious’ dog owners worse at training their pets

BADLY behaved dogs are least likely to improve with owners who describe themselves as conscientious, a study has found.

Dog owners who believe themselves to be fastidious when it comes to taking care of their pet tend to have worse training outcomes, according to researchers in the US.

This may be because they have been too forceful with discipline techniques, or are simply more likely to report bad behaviour than owners with a more laissez-faire approach.

Dr Lauren Powell, from the University of Pennsylvania, said: “This was a surprising result, which was in some ways at odds with the findings from a previous study.

“Conscientious dog owners in the current study may have already exhausted the limits of reducing undesirable behaviours, like a dog’s aggression toward strangers.

“Another explanation is that conscientious owners may be more aware of their dog’s behaviour and report changes in a more accurate manner, whereas less conscientious owners may only report major changes, like the absence of bites.”

The researchers studied the physical and psychological characteristics of 131 dogs that attended a veterinary training school with their owners over a sixmonth period.

Dog owners were asked to complete a questionnaire before, during and after the programme, describing their own characteristics and the behaviour of their canines.

Information collected included types of aggressive behaviour, signs of desperation anxiety and energy and excitability levels. Dogs that exhibited the worst behaviour showed the most improvement by the end of the programme, the study found.

Meanwhile, dogs belonging to owners who saw themselves as conscientious were less likely to have improved.

The combination of introverted owners and fearful dogs was also found to yield less improvement in behaviour.

Bad behaviour is reported to be one of the main reasons why people decide to give up ownership of their dogs.

Character traits of owners are an “important factor” in determining how well their dogs respond to professional training, the researchers said.

They recommended that further studies examine why some owners are reluctant to pursue certain training methods or fail to complete training programmes.

The findings were published in the journal