Aggressive behaviour is affected by demographic, environmental and behavioural factors in purebred dogs.

ABSTRACT: Aggressive behaviour is an unwanted and serious problem in pet dogs, negatively influencing canine welfare, management and public acceptance. We aimed to identify demographic and environmental factors associated with aggressive behaviour toward people in Finnish purebred pet dogs. We collected behavioural data from 13,715 dogs with an owner-completed online questionnaire. Here we used a dataset of 9270 dogs which included 1791 dogs with frequent aggressive behaviour toward people and 7479 dogs without aggressive behaviour toward people. We studied the effect of several explanatory variables on aggressive behaviour with multiple logistic regression. Several factors increased the probability of aggressive behaviour toward people: older age, being male, fearfulness, small body size, lack of c

SUBMITTER: Mikkola S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8093277 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature