Characterising Dogmanship

Abstract

The dog-human dyad is the first human-animal relationship believed to exist and is still highly relevant in society. Despite the ancient nature of this partnership, dysfunctional relationships and their negative consequences (such as poor obedience and eventual relinquishment) continue to occur. Human behaviour has been shown to be highly influential on dogs’ behaviour and emotional state, and hence is pivotal to the success or failure of any dog-human dyad. Consequently, this work aims to characterise the human attributes that influence dog behaviour and identify an optimal way of interacting with dogs, or good dogmanship. Additionally, this work seeks to examine the psychological underpinnings that are likely to contribute to how humans interact with dogs, or their dogmanship. Chapter 1 introduces and discusses the concepts that will be explored in this work. It also explains the relevance of dogmanship to dog-human relationship outcomes and how human training behaviours, relational factors and psychological attributes influence these outcomes. Chapter 2 presents a published article on the human attributes that contribute to dogmanship and horsemanship, according to the literature. By focusing on the influence of certain human behaviours on arousal and affective state, I compiled a list of human attributes that are likely to be of use to any veterinary practitioner interacting with canine or equine patients. This chapter also presents human attributes that are unique to dogmanship and horsemanship, respectively. The approach highlighted in this chapter encourages a welfare-centric view of animals and, as such, is likely to be of use to parties outside of veterinary medicine. Chapter 3 features a published article that summarises the influence of certain human attributes (such as behaviour, personality and attitude) on dog-human relationships. It discusses the various ways of measuring dog-human relationships or elements within them and offers suggestions on how to improve the accuracy and scope of these measures. This chapter also highlights how relationship success and canine obedience may not always coincide. Chapter 4 consists of a published article reporting on results of the Farm Dog Survey. It presents an analysis of how the personality dimensions of Australian stock dog handlers (n=806) may influence their particular dogmanship. Ordinal logistic regressions for each of the personality dimensions of agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness to experience were performed. Results revealed that conscientiousness was positively associated with handlers recognising the training principles involved in herding dog work but that handlers high in conscientiousness may engage in somewhat counterintuitive training practices. These and other results are discussed in the light of extant literature on personality and dog training. Overall, this chapter highlights the value of and need for education in dogmanship, or similar principles for individuals who work with dogs. Chapter 5 presents a published article on dog-human and horse-human attachment bonds. It examines the similarities of these bonds to the traditional child-caregiver attachment model and discusses the reasons why these relationships may differ. It postulates how the different evolutionary pathways and uses of dogs and horses may have shaped the nature of the bonds that these animals develop with their human caregivers. This chapter also explores the human attributes that may facilitate the formation of attachment or attachment-like bonds and introduces the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) in human-animal relationships. Chapter 6 features an article that has been submitted to the Journal of Veterinary Behavior- Clinical Applications and Research. It assesses video of basic obedience training interactions retrieved from the YouTube website (n=43). This study aimed to assess whether certain human behaviours influenced the attention and incidence of prosocial behaviours of dogs (voluntary behaviours that attempt to instigate social interaction, including gaze and attentiveness as discussed in Bentosela et al 2016), and how dog behaviour may conversely affect the behaviour of its trainer. Lag sequential analysis of these videos showed that the timing of certain key behaviours (such as reward delivery and non-speech vocalisations) were important to attract dog attention. This analysis supports the use of lag sequential analysis in future studies of dog-human interactions. Chapter 7 presents an article submitted to PLOS ONE reporting on the results of our online Dogmanship Survey. This online questionnaire was designed to investigate how human experience with dogs, personality and EI may influence the perception of canine arousal and affective state. Ordinal logistic regression of the responses (n=851) revealed that EI was positively associated with ratings of positive affect in a dog displaying behavioural indicators of positive affect and negative affect in a dog displaying indications of negative affect. This analysis also showed that the personality dimensions of agreeableness and neuroticism may bias an individual’s ratings of dog arousal and affective state, respectively. This highlights a potential cause for misattribution of signals and miscommunication in dog-human dyads. The final chapter in summarises all the information and research presented in this work and suggests avenues of future research in areas of dogmanship and measuring dog-human relationship success. The dispersal of the information presented in this thesis should assist in reducing the incidence of miscommunication in dog-human dyads and may promote animal welfare on a large scale.