Dog owners tend to overestimate the bond they have with their pet, which could have implications for preventing dogs from roaming far from home or attacking animals.
“As caregivers, we need to develop better bonds with our dogs, not only for our own well-being and the dog’s well-being, but also for nature,” says Lorena Saavedra-Aracena at the University of Magallanes, Chile.
Previous research has shown that unsterilised male dogs and undernourished dogs tend to roam longer distances, but this isn’t always the case. Saavedra-Aracena wondered if the dogs’ attachment to their caregivers also played a role, so she and her colleagues equipped 41 free-roaming pet dogs with GPS collars, tracking their journeys on Navarino Island in southern Chile for about 3 weeks.
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Although most of the dogs stayed within a 300-metre radius of home, some travelled up to 28 kilometres away. One even swam in a near-freezing canal for an hour chasing native water birds, says Saavedra-Aracena. The dogs regularly brought home carcasses of native birds and muskrats, and 80 per cent of them harassed other animals, mainly local cattle and sheep.
The researchers asked owners to complete a standard survey about the dog-human bond. Then, to get the “dog’s point of view”, they ran a behaviour test adapted from evaluations of children’s bonds with their parents. Each dog was reunited with its owner in a new place, addressed by strangers, left alone in an unfamiliar room and given free access to a second, empty room.
The team found that lower scores on the bonding test correlated with greater roaming distances. The owners of these dogs had assessed their pets’ attachment to them as much stronger than the bonding test suggests, says Saavedra-Aracena.
It is possible that people place too much weight on their dog’s enthusiastic greetings as a sign of bonding, she says. Dogs that roamed the most often showed the most exuberant responses to seeing their owners again. They may have simply become accustomed to carrying out an “evolutionary” ritual of bond re-establishment that is typical among pack members after long absences, says Saavedra-Aracena.
Relationships with other humans may have weakened the dog-owner bond in far-roaming dogs, she says. Neighbours sometimes give them food, and tourists hiking on the island offer walks and companionship, potentially reinforcing the roaming problem.
Outside opportunities for food, exercise and socialisation could all affect bonding, says Paul McGreevy at the University of New England in Australia. These aspects are critical to dog welfare and represent needs that must be met by its caregiver, both for building attachment and for curbing roaming behaviour. “If any one of those three pillar resources is lacking, then the dog can be justified in going elsewhere,” he says.
Although it has become less common to see roaming dogs in industrialised nations, they continue to roam freely in most societies, says Saavedra-Aracena. Even when owners restrain their pets, some dogs can escape their leashes or enclosures.
“Unlike children who loosen bonds with their parents as they grow older, dogs can become more attached to their caregivers throughout their lives,” she says. “So it’s never too late to work on building that bond, playing with your dog and just spending time with him, getting to know him better, just like you would with a human partner.”
Applied Animal Behaviour Science
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