Effects of Sociality Level on Companion Dog Training through Food Reinforcement

SIMPLE SUMMARY: This test evaluates how your dog reacts to strangers’ behavior. Dogs with high sociality interact positively with strangers, such as physical contact or close proximity to strangers. On the other hand, dogs with low social levels may exhibit fear and fear-related behaviors or may show aggressiveness to relieve them. Highly social dogs tend to keep their eyes on their owners longer and are more likely to interact with humans. This study showed that the results of social training of dogs through food enrichment were much more effective in both the high sociality and low sociality groups. In particular, the high sociality group showed a much higher increase in social behavior than the low sociality group. This suggests that sociality is highly related even in the process of communication and training between dogs and humans. It also shows that it can be reinforced more effectively in dog-human interactions. ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of sociality level in dogs using food reinforcement. The companion dogs living mostly inside (IS) and those living mostly outside (OS) groups were further classified into high sociality (HS) and low sociality (LS) groups using a social test. The data were analyzed by observing videos of the dogs and recording nine categories of sociality. Passive; activity; and communication tasks were measured in terms of the time the dog first contacted the trainer; the time it took for the dog to approach within 1 m of the trainer, and the time the dog remained in contact. The IS and OS groups showed no significant differences in any category; except for close to trainer within 1 m of the active phase. However, in a comparison between the overall HS and LS groups; significant positive changes were observed in all items except for the first contact time to the trainer of the passive and active phase. This is an important result of the sociality level; as positive results can be predicted not only in a dog’s ability to adapt to the environment but also in the communication and training exchanges between dogs and humans