Pandemic life left its mark on dogs

While it would be great to read a dog’s mind to figure out why they chew your shoes or howl at the moon, that technology is probably still a long way off. However, a study published today in the journal PLOS One is offering pet owners and veterinarians a baseline for understanding dog behavior. 

The data comes out of the Dog Aging Project, a large-scale research initiative that involves over 40 different institutions. The goal is to conduct rigorous scientific research to define and explain the effects of aging on dogs. The project has built a community of volunteers and researchers, all united by their love for dogs, to use science to help dogs live longer, healthier lives.

The team sought to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic affected dogs’ well-being. They analyzed over four years of owner-reported data from over 47,000 dogs. According to the team, the power of this study lies in its size.

“When you have a data set this big, you really do have power in numbers,” study co-author and Virginia Tech postdoctoral scholar Courtney Sexton said in a statement. While we may not fully understand all of the factors behind behaviors, having this much information can help scientists decipher patterns that are playing out in real life. 

Specifically, the team was looking at trends in dogs’ fear, attention and excitability, aggression, and trainability. Overall, they found that our canine companions are pretty adaptable to life’s big changes, including a global pandemic. 

“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.”

Despite dogs’ overall adaptability during the pandemic, they did find a small but notable exception in trainability. The dogs enrolled in the study after 2020 had lower average trainability scores. Canines who were already enrolled in 2020 as adults likely benefited from some pre-pandemic training experience. 

The data does not offer a definitive cause, but the researchers speculate that some of the pandemic’s unique circumstances could be a contributing factor. More dogs were adopted from shelters during the pandemic where their lives had been disrupted and many owners were more stressed and couldn’t dedicate time to training.

[ Related: Is my dog ‘old’? Vets finally have the answers. ]

In future studies, the team and Dog Aging Project as a whole plans to explore how a dog’s geographical location or health status could influence their behavior over time. This way, dogs and their owners can be better prepared for whatever life has in store.

“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,”  said Sexton. 

This will ultimately help veterinarians and pet lovers alike better understand how the dog’s behavior and health are linked.