Dog Friendly Holiday House Sunshine Coast Queensland

Dogs Are Truly a Girl's Best Friend

Not only is Fido spoiled with his food, his toys and his groomer, now he also has his own personality test! It's enough to drive us to the dog house. Well, are you compatible with your doggie?

'If only they could talk....' Dog owners say this with such frequency that it’s no wonder they are convinced of their pet being as capable of expressing feelings as having a human-like psychology. Does it sound like anthropomorphism? Recent studies conducted by American university scholar Sam Gosling are likely to challenge a slew of previous ideas, starting with the fact that dogs actually have a real personality. The dogma established by the scientific community suggesting that canines are devoid of personality, are debunked. Is this just a way of maintaining the homo sapiens’ dominant trait: the ability to 'think'?

Gosling asked owners to evaluate four personality traits in their dogs: affection-aggression, calm-anxiety, intelligence-stupidity and energy-laziness. These characteristics are also found in people and are expressed in a positive or a negative way. After this, the animals were entrusted to people who were total strangers and were tasked with observing them using the same criteria as those with which their masters examined them. This was a necessary condition in order to keep the impartiality of the study, which, according to Sam Gosling, would thwart any idea suggesting that masters project their own personality on their dog.

Where does character come from?

A total of 78 dogs of various breeds and origins were tested, and for each dog, the masters and strangers had observed at least one personality trait in common. The research also made it possible to demonstrate that behaviours generally attributed to dogs because of their race were not necessarily true. There are pitbulls who are not aggressive and labrador retrievers who are anything but nice. That means that we cannot place stereotypes on dogs, and moreover, as far as Sam Gosling is concerned, this is indisputable proof that dogs, do indeed, possess their own unique personality.

A similar observation was made in a study conducted at the University of Austin in Texas by British biologist and geneticist Jonathan Flint of the University of Oxford. Flint said that observing dogs is a way to learn more about human personality. He explains further that 'biological and genetic origins are therefore what principally determine the character of a living being.' For instance, shyness is not always of the same kind depending on whether it is canine or human. Sam Gosling is resolved in proving to the worldwide scientific community that he is serious in his pursuit of proving the personalities of dogs and other pet animals.