Temporal consistency of behavior trait measurements in guide dogs.

ABSTRACT: Guide dog organizations have strict criteria to breed, raise, and select dogs to assist people with visual impairments. In collaboration with Dr. James Serpell, several guide dog training organizations developed a scoring tool called the Behavior Checklist (BCL) to evaluate candidate guide dogs. The tool's use has expanded to the entire assistance dog industry and is rapidly emerging as the standard behavior assessment. Since 2003, Guiding Eyes for the Blind (GEB) has used the BCL to measure individual dogs' behaviors up to 8 times between puppyhood and final placement. Here, we evaluate the consistency of the BCL over multiple evaluations in a population of 3,969 Labrador Retrievers raised by Guiding Eyes. We grouped BCL evaluations by two methods, factor analysis, and trainer-defined gro

SUBMITTER: Hilby EK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12272753 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature