A set of cognitive tests for puppies can predict how brave, energetic, self-controlled and trainable they will be as adults.
Knowing this can help owners tailor teaching styles, adapt expectations and generally better understand their petsā abilities and limitations, says at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
āThese traits are not necessarily good or bad, and they donāt mean whether a puppy is smart or not,ā she says. āThese tests just help know what kind of exercises each puppy needs.ā
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Junttila and at smartDOG Ltd in HyvinkƤƤ, Finland, previously discovered they could classify dogsā using a battery of cognitive tests. They wondered whether an adaptation of those same tests might work on puppies ā and predict how they would behave as they grew older.
To find out, Junttila, Tiira and their colleagues evaluated hundreds of dogs aged between 3 and 7 months old based on seven tests. Some of them looked at the puppiesā problem-solving skills or how they responded when they encountered a new person or place, for example.
Over the next few years, the team tested 99 of these dogs again as adults up to the age of 8 and assessed behaviours in 227 of them based on detailed owner surveys.
The researchers found that, generally, test performance stayed essentially the same over the years. The puppiesā results also frequently aligned with their behaviour and skills later in life. Young dogs that are quick to follow pointed fingers, for example, will probably be faster to understand tricks and toilet training. This is because they are probably more attuned to human cues, the researchers say.
But, paradoxically, puppies that gaze at humans to ask for help may end up more fearful of strangers as adults. Junttila and Tiira suspect that this reflects a lack of confidence in problem-solving combined with a tendency to pay more attention to their surroundings, including people.
at Dalhousie University in Canada says the findings echo similar trends in people. āDevelopmental scientists have repeatedly found that young childrenās ability to control their behaviours improves substantially over development, but their temperamental traits like extraversion or shyness stay fairly stable.ā
Applied Animal Behaviour Science
