Research assessing the behavior of dog breeds common in Finland has found that a significant proportion of our canine best friends live with some form of anxiety.
According to recent statistical reports, as many as 89.7 million dogs provided companionship to their human friends in the United States in 2017, the latest year for which data are available.
Dogs are some of the most popular pets around the world, and no wonder. Anecdotally, they are loyal, loving friends and a constant source of boundless affection and good fun.
Yet, much like humans, our canine pals can also face troubles such as stress and anxiety.
In fact, according to a new study from the University of Helsinki in Finland, dogs are particularly prone to a wide range of anxiety-like traits.
In the recent study, first author Milla Salonen and her colleagues analyzed the behaviors that 13,715 pet dogs from Finland — belonging to 264 different breeds — exhibited. Their findings appear in Scientific Reports.
The researchers asked the dogs’ owners to fill in questionnaires surveying behaviors that related to seven anxiety-related traits. These were noise sensitivity, general fear, fear of surfaces, impulsivity or lack of attention, compulsive behaviors, aggression, and behaviors relating to separation anxiety.
By looking at the survey data, the investigators found that 72.5% of the dogs expressed anxiety-like behaviors, according to their owners.
Of the total number of dogs, 32% had noise sensitivity, meaning that they were frightened of at least one noise. Among noise-sensitive dogs, the most common fear was that of sounds associated with fireworks — this fear had a “prevalence of 26%,” the researchers write.
General fearfulness affected 29% of the dogs in the study. “Specifically, 17% of dogs showed fear of other dogs, 15% fear