Study Finds Dogs' Stress During The Pandemic Leads to Some Behaviorial changes

No one expected the pandemic or its aftermath. Many people were stuck at home and dog adoption skyrocketed during that time. But what was the affect of the pandemic on our pets?

My interview is with Courtney Sexton, researcher at Virginia Tech. A transcript follows the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6SwXiH67bA

Hi, it's Beverly from the Well-Trained Dog and Pet Care. Thanks for joining us today. And my guest is Courtney Sexton from the Virginia, Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. And we're going to talk about the Dog Aging Project and something about a recent study that we found about how the pandemic affected our dogs. So welcome, Courtney.

Hi, Beverly, thank you.

Welcome. Welcome to everyone, thank you. Let's talk a little bit about what the Dog Aging Project actually is and how did you get involved with it?

Sure, yeah. So the Dog Aging Project is a large-scale, longitudinal, so ongoing study of companion dogs in the United States. And it involves several different research labs and institutions across the country and researchers from those institutions. And it is a participant-driven study. So that means people like your listeners, you, me, who live with dogs can sign up to participate in the study.

Currently we have over 50,000 dogs enrolled in the study from the time that it started in 2019 to now. And essentially we gather data about the dog's behavior, their lifestyle, where they live, what their environments are like, their health. And we watch them over time as they age to see how they age and what kinds of factors are influencing that process.

Of course, no one could have ever predicted the pandemic and what it did to all of us. But you did a study focusing especially on the pandemic and how it affected our dogs.

Yeah, so this was actually the seeds from this project kind of were planted a long time ago when we wanted to look particularly at those behavioral profiles of the dogs involved in the study and to see kind of where they landed in terms of some major categories of behavior that we see in dogs. And so we took a look at establishing kind of a baseline to see like, okay, we have all these dogs, what is their initial state so that moving forward we can look later.

But as it turned out, the first few years of our data collection were smack in the middle of the pandemic. So we launched the study right before the pandemic. And obviously everyone experienced a lot of different changes to routine, changes to their households. Some people brought new dogs into their home, et cetera. So it was a really good opportunity for us to take a look and just see how things may have differed from house to house, from dog to dog on the behavioral scale.

What did you find?

You know, surprisingly, there was not a lot of, I wanna say significant change from year to year. So we looked at essentially 2020 to 2023 were the data years that we had. And in the categories of behavior that we assessed which were attention seeking—so how much your dog wanted to like be around you or play, et cetera—aggression, so how reactive they may have been, fear. And what was our fourth category? Oh my goodness, I'm blanking.

Fear, aggression, attention seeking. Is it trainability?

Trainability. That's the important one. Go trainer, okay. Not terrifying attention. Thank you.

Yes, so there weren't like distinct trends in one direction or another. Like it wasn't like, okay, from 2020 to 2023 aggression skyrocketed and fear downgraded in a direct line. We saw some increases and decreases in those averages between the years, but in one category—trainability—we did actually see an interesting trend. And that was it decreased every year after 2020 until 2023 when it still had decreased but the difference was a little bit smaller. So it started peaking back up toward that 2020 average.

And then of course we also saw that some other factors like age and sex or life stage, not specific age, life stage and sex and breed, things like that had some influence on behaviors as one might expect.

Were there more behavior problems with the new dogs that were adopted because most people adopted a dog or were we seeing a shift in behavior from a dog that had, you know, the person had been out of the house and now was there. And then after a year was out of the house again.

Yeah, so there wasn't anything specific to life stage.

So we couldn't say like, oh, it was all the new puppies who were having a harder time with being trained or something like that. And we don't know, you know, again, this is an average over thousands of dogs. So we don't know which among them were adopted in that year versus which, you know, had had some training prior to the pandemic.

What it really kind of indicates to me is that, you know, regardless, we were all facing this thing and whether your routine was shifted or not, dogs were responding to those changes, right? So yeah, maybe you had more time at home and that actually wasn't great for the dog. You know, maybe the kids were around more and that made them more nervous or maybe, you know, they were having more walking time and so they were getting energy out and they were more excited to engage in training, could be any number of things.

I think an important caveat to the study is that all of the data we're looking at are owner reported. So while, you know, the remark is that the owners are reporting their perception of the dogs as being less trainable. So that may actually have had nothing to do with the dog themselves, but the owner who was stressed, you know, maybe not in the frame of mind to engage in a successful training routine, but saw that as the dog not being trainable. You know, it could have been any number of things really.

That's really interesting. I never thought of that, that it's not possibly the dog, but it's the owner and then of course, the owner's perception of the dog. Whether it is, you know, it's a dog that's been with them for a while or if they've never seen the dog before.

Yeah, you brought it in.

Yeah, exactly. So it was really, it was interesting and kind of the takeaway for me from our perspective is that yes, while again, we may have all experienced this big thing together, we were all experiencing it in our own ways. And our dogs feed off of our emotions. They feed off of our energy. They do pay attention to us. So they're paying attention to what we're putting out there and that's gonna influence how they behave at an individual level.

Any questions during the study about people who reached out to trainers, for instance? I mean, a lot of people reached out to me. I was one who would actually go, still go in the house. Some companies went virtual and people would actually ask me to come and would hire me because I would still come to their home when they felt they couldn't do it because look what the kids were doing, you know, with Zoom, didn't feel they'd get the same.

It's different, yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm glad that people saw you and that you were able to be a resource during that time. We didn't dig into the specifics of, you know, actions kind of around the behaviors. Again, this was mostly to establish a baseline of, okay, what were those behaviors? What do those profiles look like?

So that moving forward, now again, the Dog Aging Project is a longitudinal study. We can take those data and look back and say, hopefully there's not another pandemic anytime soon, but if something does happen, can we then compare data from another year to that established first kind of round of collection or to look at an individual level, just as you're saying, to look at some of those more nuanced factors for each dog.

Now that again, we have this kind of starting point for thousands of them, we can go back and say, okay, well, what other factors in the environment do we want to look into? What other things that the humans or the owners engage with do we want to look into and see if that had any impact on those scores?

What kind of study or studies will you be doing in the near future?

I am currently working on, so I think you asked a few minutes ago and I don't know that I fully answered your question. I came to the Dog Aging Project as an evolutionary anthropologist studying human animal interactions and in particular communication between people and dogs. And my work on the team in the lab that I work in here at Virginia Tech with Dr. Ruppel, we look at those environmental factors that influence that relationship and those interactions.

So that can be physical environmental factors like you're drinking water or do you live in a rural environment or an urban environment, things like that. What are the exposures and the different exposures there or your social environment? So do you have access to a social network? And by you, I mean your dog, but often those things go hand in hand, right? Does your dog have access to a social network? Do they have access to care? Do they have companions?

And so I'm engaging a suite of studies right now that I'm actually really excited about involving companionship. So looking at when dogs lose a companion, how that impacts their behavior in the short-term and the long-term. And then if there are physical health components to those changes and responses too. And also more broadly, different levels of companionship. So for example, dogs who live with multiple people and no other animals or dogs who live with several other animals in one person or dogs who have little people in the home versus don't. How does that play into those behavioral profiles and those health outcomes?

Very interesting. I mean, we could go on forever. There's so many different questions and studies. My goodness. Anything else you'd like the viewers to know?

Well, again, the goal of the DAP is really to see what are these shared elements in our world? Because the human dog bond is a really unique thing, right? In terms of interspecies relationships. So what are these shared elements that we can learn from in looking at our companion dogs? Unfortunately, they do live shorter lives than we do. And in that time, they have a lot to teach us.

So we're just excited to have so many people participating and interested in going on this learning journey with us. And it's a free survey that you can take. You can sign your dog up. Hokie's a member of it. Zippy was a member of the Dog Aging Project beforehand. If you have several dogs, you can only sign one up. But it's great. I mean, you get surveys every now and then and just fill them out and feel like you're part of research.

Yeah, and you are. I mean, we are dependent on it. We can't do studies at this scale without people, without community scientists, without at-home scientists. So it's really a success because of our participants like yourself.

All right, thank you, Courtney.

Thanks.

Courtney Sexton from Virginia Tech.

***Beverly Amsler is the owner of The Well-Trained Dog & Pet Care. She has been a professional dog trainer, dog walker, and pet sitter since 2014.  Beverly is a Certified Dog Trainer through the Victoria Stilwell Academy and a Certified Professional Pet Sitter through Pet Sitters International.  She is a member of the Texas Pet Sitters Association and the Association For Professional Dog Training.  Before starting her business, Beverly spent more than 30 years as a journalist for newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Indiana, and Utah. Learn more about Beverly.