Author(s): Nina Hillmann

Presentation: poster

The present study investigated whether certain pro-social behaviors in shelter dogs contribute to their adoption. The subjects for this study were shelter dogs observed in the local animal shelter environment. There was no interaction between the experimenter and the dogs. The experimenter simply observed the dogs, recorded their behavior and then determined whether certain behaviors could be correlated to the dog’s subsequent adoption. The behaviors recorded included eye-contact, vocalization, tail wagging, and retreat forward or backward. Eye-contact was further broken down into the categories of “look away” and “sustained staring”, while retreat forward and backward was broken down into “forward positive” and “forward negative”. Preliminary results indicate that there is a correlation between a dog’s behavior and its subsequent adoption. First findings showed that two dogs who exhibited three of the identified behaviors were adopted while three other dogs which had only shown one behavior had not been adopted. This suggests that pro-social behavior exhibited by a dog has a positive effect on the likelihood of being adopted.

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