Dogs enrich our lives in many ways. Working dogs, in particular, perform various tasks to assist humans. Guide dogs, service dogs, hearing dogs, and dogs that detect seizures, cancer, drugs, or explosives are some of the canines carefully bred and trained to lend their talents to improve our lives and keep us safe.
Extensive resources are invested to breed, raise, and train these dogs, but success rates from training programs are reportedly only 35-50 percent. Much attention and research is currently directed at improving this success rate to reduce expenses, decrease the waiting period for obtaining a service dog, and meet the growing demand for American-bred detection dogs.
With funding from the American Kennel Club (AKC) Canine Health Foundation (CHF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the health of all dogs and their owners, investigators are exploring the temperamental traits and cognitive skills that create a successful working dog. Identifying these traits and determining when they first appear and how stable they are over time are critical to more efficient development of working dogs.
About CHF |
| With more than $62 million in funding to date, the AKC Canine Health Foundation provides grants for the highest quality canine health research and shares information on the discoveries that help prevent, treat and cure canine diseases. |
Veterinary professionals are integral to maintaining and optimizing the health of working dogs in their care. Due to the emotional and financial investment behind every working dog, veterinary support for research into the development of successful working dogs is also key.
Temperament versus cognition
Temperament is defined as an animal's nature or behaviors that are relatively independent from learning, values, and attitudes. In contrast, cognition is the ability to assimilate information obtained from thought, experience, and the senses into knowledge and understanding. In his 2018 publication,1 CHF-funded researcher Dr. Evan MacLean describes the difference like this: We can train a dog to pick up a set of keys, but what if those keys are on the floor and partially covered by a book? What if the closest door to the room where the keys are located is closed? He notes cognitive flexibility is what allows dogs to solve these problems. Dr. MacLean started researching the cognitive skills that predict a successful working dog while completing a post-doctoral fellowship and serving as co-director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center at Duke University in Durham, NC. Alongside post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Emily Bray, their research continues through the University of Arizona Canine Cognition Center. Their results show great promise in improving our understanding of working dog success.
