What shapes your dog's personality?

Ever wondered why your loveable pet Labrador never seems to take any notice of what you are trying to get it to do?

Maybe it is all in its genetics!

Scientists in the United States who studied the genetics of more than 200 dog breeds say there are actually only 10 types of canine.

They say herders, hounds and sled dogs all have their own genetic traits which make them unique when compared to terriers, dingoes and spaniels.

But is your pooch's personality only tied to its genetics? Or can its upbringing shape also shape a dog's personality?

Dr Melissa Starling - who holds a PhD in dog behaviour, personality, emotions, and cognition - said the study showed that the genetics that typify dogs were present in wolves before dog breeds ever existed.

"This gives us the idea that the selective breeding that produces these specific behaviours that make dogs good at the jobs that we bred them for, they're probably present in dogs all over the world."

That meant that dogs which were bred for similar purposes may be genetically closer to those dogs than to dogs which were closer to them geographically, she said.

It had been difficult to prove because dog behaviour was not just based on genetics, but also their environment and the research was complex, she said.

For example, the study found that herding breeds were characterised by high "non-social fear", which is fear of external stimuli like wind, loud noises or vehicles, she said.

Terriers by contrast were characterised by higher levels of predatory chasing, while scent hounds such as beagles  were characterised by low trainability, she said.

"It can be a little bit difficult to get them [beagles] to focus on the task that we would like them to focus on because they're too busy focusing on the scents that they're supposed to focus on because they're a beagle."

Starling said how much influence an owner had on the dog's behaviour would depend somewhat on the dog.

A dog would have a genetic potential when an owner got it, she said.

"They're born with a likelihood of expressing certain behaviours, so we might think we take our border collies and there's a high likelihood that they'll have some non-social fear issues, but that doesn't mean that will actually manifest ... and we don't really know to what degree that will manifest, we just know that tendency's there."

A dog's early life experiences as well as its individual personality will shape those genetic tendencies, she said.

What dog owners need to consider

It was important for potential dog owners to think about what a dog had been bred for, she said.

People needed to take a step back and not just choose a dog because they thought it was cute or seemed loveable, she said.

Instead it was important to think about what the dog was bred for because that would influence some of its behaviours, she said.

"And are those behaviours going to be helpful in producing a canine companion that is going to be easy to live with, or is going to be the kind of dog that you can do the things you want to do with them?

"If we want to live in an apartment in a city is a border collie a good idea? You know probably not because there's so many external stimuli going on in an apartment block that it's quite challenging for a border collie to live there."

Why do dogs growl or nip?

Asked why a fox terrier might growl at people who approached it, Starling said usually growling was an example of a "distance increasing behaviour".

"So that dog is growling because it's trying to warn somebody to stay away because they're getting too close for that dog's comfort."

Growling was an easy signal for owners to respond to and the best option in the first instance would be to remove the dog from that situation because the growling could be a warning which may escalate to biting if it was not heeded, she said.

Another person said they had a puppy which would nip, particularly during the evening.

Starling said puppies are a little like small children and by evening it might be quite tired.

"Some small children just go to sleep when they're tired other small children get very restless and fussy because they're in that phase where they're fed up with everything and they haven't got quite as far as going to sleep yet."

If the biting behaviour was happening in the evening, it might be good to put the puppy in a pen or a crate at that point to signal some quiet time and give them something to chew on to calm them down, she said.

Asked about a dog that occasionally peed on the carpet, she said it might not be fully house trained.

Sometimes, particularly if the weather was wet and cold, they might slip on the training because it did not want to go outside, she said.

If it happened in the same spot each time, it may be worth blocking off access to that room, she said.

"You can also teach them to tell you when they want to go out, you can teach them to ring a bell, for example."

The best way to work out why a dog was doing something was to work out the function of that behaviour, Starling said, when asked about how to stop a dog from barking at children.

"Because then we can work towards giving the dog what the dog needs, hopefully in a way that is compatible with what we need from the dog as well."

Generally the quicker you interrupted that behaviour and redirected the dog into a different behaviour the better, and that meant before the dog started barking, she said.

"So try to pick up some of those signs that the dog gives when they're about to bark which usually means that I'm looking at it, maybe their ears come up, maybe they go a little bit still ... sometimes you can see they get these little wrinkles between their ears on their brow."

At that point call the dog, give them a treat and move them away because "distance is always your friend when you're trying to figure out what's going on", she said.