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 pets鈥� abilities and limitations, says at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
鈥淭hese traits are not necessarily good or bad, and they don鈥檛 mean whether a puppy is smart or not,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hese tests just help know what kind of exercises each puppy needs.鈥�
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Junttila and at smartDOG Ltd in Hyvink盲盲, Finland, previously discovered they could classify dogs鈥� using a battery of cognitive tests. They wondered whether an adaptation of those same tests might work on puppies 鈥� 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 puppies鈥� 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 puppies鈥� 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. 鈥淒evelopmental scientists have repeatedly found that young children鈥檚 ability to control their behaviours improves substantially over development, but their temperamental traits like extraversion or shyness stay fairly stable.鈥�
Applied Animal Behaviour Science
