The personality of her dogs influences how you can see television

When a doorbell rings during your favorite television show, your dog jumps up and barks or swung his head curiously? According to a new study, the answer to this question can be associated with the personality of your puppy.

This does not only apply to television programs intended for human consumption. In recent years, the dog-specific TV program has become a popular enrichment instrument among owners who want to keep and entertain their cornerstream while not in the house. Today there are many television programs – even entire cable networks – for dogs, but science behind it is limited, Lane Montgomery, main author of the study and doctoral student at Auburn University, said Gizmodo in an e -mail. She and her colleagues examined what dogs prompted to show certain behavior of television and found that the temperament played an important role.

“The interactions of a dog with television can be both positive and negative,” said Montgomery. Understanding the factors that affect TV observation behavior in corner teeth can help increase positive reactions and prevent negative, depending on the unique personality of a dog and the stimuli presented to them.

The researchers recruited 650 accompanying dogs to take part in an online survey in which their dogs were asked about the TV observation habits. This included questions whether the owner trained his dog for television, the average number of hours a week and the average number of seconds the dog spends. The survey also collected demographic and behavioral information about every dog participant. The final sample of 453 accompanying dogs ranged at the age of two months to 16 years and included both pure back and mixed races. Montgomery and her colleagues examined the reactions of the dogs to animal stimuli, non-animal stimuli and the extent to which they followed objects on the screen.

Their results, which were published on Thursday, July 17, in the magazine Scientific Reports, indicate that demographic characteristics such as age, gender and race do not influence the behavior of the TV tour of dogs, the previous TV exposure. Rather, it seems that the type of stimuli and the temperament characteristics of the dogs, such as. B. excitability or fear, shape the way they interact with television.

The researchers found that dogs generally react to see or hear animals on the screen than other stimuli, whereby about 45% always react to dog bodies such as barking and howling. However, terrible or anxious dogs reacted more to non-animal stimuli such as car horns or doorbells. Owners who described their dogs as exciting more frequently, they observed how they followed objects on the screen as if they existed in real life.

“In practice, this study helps to inform which types of dog -specific programming are most valuable for dogs,” said Montgomery. For owners, it could help you to select the right programs for your pets or inform you of training approaches to correct problematic behaviors compared to televisions how the researchers select the right programs for their house temperaments or inform training approaches.

The authors find that the results may not be representative for all dogs, since all of the pet owners surveyed were whose dogs regularly interact with television. In the future, Montgomery hopes to examine these results in an experimental context.

“Studies have started doing this, but it would be interesting to carry out additional research on how to interact personality and television and how these results lead in a real context,” she said. Such a work would further inform the best practices for the use of television in order to enrich the life of accompanying dogs.