Open AccessAggressive behaviour is affected by demographic, environmental and behavioural factors in purebred dogs
Author(s) -
Salla Mikkola,
Milla Salonen,
Jenni Puurunen,
Emma Hakanen,
Sini Sulkama,
Cynthia Gobbi Alves Araújo,
Hannes Lohi
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
scientific reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.24
H-Index - 213
ISSN - 2045-2322
DOI - 10.1038/s41598-021-88793-5
Subject(s) - purebred , animal welfare , logistic regression , welfare , demography , psychology , human factors and ergonomics , medicine , poison control , environmental health , biology , ecology , breed , sociology , political science , law
Aggressive behaviour is an unwanted and serious problem in pet dogs, negatively influencing canine welfare, management and public acceptance. We aimed to identify demographic and environmental factors associated with aggressive behaviour toward people in Finnish purebred pet dogs. We collected behavioural data from 13,715 dogs with an owner-completed online questionnaire. Here we used a dataset of 9270 dogs which included 1791 dogs with frequent aggressive behaviour toward people and 7479 dogs without aggressive behaviour toward people. We studied the effect of several explanatory variables on aggressive behaviour with multiple logistic regression. Several factors increased the probability of aggressive behaviour toward people: older age, being male, fearfulness, small body size, lack of conspecific company, and being the owner’s first dog. The probability of aggressive behaviour also differed between breeds. These results replicate previous studies and suggest that improvements in the owner education and breeding practices could alleviate aggressive behaviour toward people while genetic studies could reveal associated hereditary factors.