Library Dissertation Showcase

Investigating the differences in adults’ understanding of dog body language

  • Year of Publication:
  • 2021

A lack of dog body language knowledge in dog bite incidents is suggested to be their leading cause. This lack of understanding can be seen in both children and adults however, there is a gap in the literature of adults’ understanding. We therefore investigated the extent to which adults are successfully able to identify dog body language signals both before and after a short online intervention. A baseline measure of understanding was taken using a series of videos in which 76 participants were required to identify each dog’s level of distress. Participants were then trained to correctly identify the body language signalling and the associated distress level given off by each of the dogs. A secondary test was used to assess whether dog body language understanding had improved. The effects of perceived distress level and individual differences such as age, gender and dog ownership status on adults’ understanding of dog body language were also investigated. The intervention was significant in improving knowledge with an increase in correct identification scores from 90% of participants after training. Distress level and ownership status were also found to have significant effects on correct identification scores. Age effects in females were found to be insignificant as well as gender effects in ‘younger’ participants. Misidentifications of ‘angry/very distressed’ behaviours as ‘happy/relaxed’ behaviours before training were high with 63% of participants making this mistake at least once. No participants made this mistake after training. Educating adults on dog body language is thus successful and may be key in reducing cases of dog bite incidents. Effects of perceived distress level and dog ownership status also highlight the need to educate people with varying degrees of dog experience how to accurately identify a range of body language signals.

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