Breed Does Predict Behavior, Just Not Perfectly

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184 – June, 2022

By Caroline Coile

For one week in May, newspaper and magazine headlines were about dog breeds and behavior—but not in a way most of us would agree with. “New study shows that a dog’s breed does not predict its behavior (ABC News); “Breed is not a good predictor of individual dog behavior, study finds” (NBC News); “Dog breed doesn’t affect behavior, according to new genetic research (Smithsonian Magazine), and on and on and on. News agencies and reporters seemed almost gleeful to discredit long held notions that breeds tend to act in different ways. After all, to claim genetic differences in breed behaviors is bordering on politically incorrect. It flies in the face of “every rescue is the same as every purebred” and “it’s all how you raise them.”

I read these articles while I was at a dog show, watching a Havanese try to jump in everyone’s lap, a Sheltie spin and bark, a Lab carrying its toy ringside, and a couple of terriers facing off. I called malarkey (actually I used a stronger word).

I’d learned about the article when a reporter from a prominent magazine called me about the study. She reached out to me because my book, Barron’s Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds, was quoted in the article. We’ll get back to that.

The reporter contended people buy a breed of dog expecting it to act a certain way, and are disappointed when it doesn’t. AKC breed descriptions essentially set the dog up for failure because when the dog isn’t “intelligent” or “merry” or “loyal” it’s seen as defective, she said. Her focus was on descriptions in the standards and on AKC’s website, especially AKC’s three-word description for every breed. For example my breed, Saluki, is described as “Dignified, Gentle, Independent-Minded.” Actually I think that is a fair description of my dogs, but I wouldn’t see them as defective if it weren’t, and I wouldn’t expect them to act that way always, and I wouldn’t expect those behaviors to be exclusive to their breed.

Click here to read the complete article
184 – June, 2022

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Posted by AnthonyA on Jun 12 2022. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.