The ideal herding dog: personality and behavioral traits predict herding ability

Anwyn Gatesy-Davis

Why study herding dogs?

  • Estimated 87.2 million cattle and 5.03 million sheep in the U.S. (USDA, 2024)
  • Herding dogs work on farms helping to move and manage livestock

Herding dogs are an investment

Farmers invest:

Farmers receive: Dog labor valued at $31,5001

When it works, it works!

One in five dogs fail

Risks

  • “Waste” invested resources
  • Potential harm to livestock

Knowledge informs real-life decisions

  • Why do some herding dogs fail while others succeed?

  • Improve success rate with knowledge of differences between successful/unsuccessful dogs
  • Inform breeding, selection, and training

Personality differences

  • Dog personality predicts a wide range of (non-herding) outcomes 1
  • Dog owners believe personality relates to herding ability 2

Personality predicts perceived herding ability1

  • Sample: Kelpies in Australia
  • Methods:
    • Owners rate level of personality traits in their dogs
      • Aggregate traits into dog personality profiles
    • Owners rate their dog’s overall herding ability

Personality traits group into personality profiles

Profile 1

  • Calmness
  • Intelligence
  • Patience

Profile 2

  • Confidence
  • Boldness
  • Persistence
  • Hyperactivity
  • Excitability

Profile 3

  • Trainabililty
  • Timidness
  • Hyperactivity
  • Excitability
  • Obedience
  • Nervousness

Profile 4

  • Sociability
  • Friendliness

Personality predicts perceived herding ability1

Profile 1 ^ + Profile 2 ^ + Profile 3 ^ + Profile 4 v

+ sex(male) ^ + utility work ^ + droving work ^

= overall herding ability

Herding behaviors

[insert images/gifs of a couple examples of herding behaviors]

  • Owners believe skills at individual herding behaviors relates to overall herding ability 1

Owners show off their dogs’ herding skills in competitions

  • Dog and their human handler move livestock through an obstacle course
  • Competition judges give score based on performance and time
  • Trials offer standardized comparisons of herding performance [insert diagram of trial course]

We explore the relationship between working dog personality, behavior, herding ability, and herding performance

General methods

  • Online survey sent to owners of herding dogs

    • Total sample of 186 owners and 389 dogs

    • All owners reside in USA

    • Instruments:

    • Personality: herding dog assessment form-personality (Wilson et al., 2022)

    • Behavior: modified livestock working (herding) dog assessment form (McGreevy et al., 2015)

    • Overall herding ability: single 5-point Likert-style item

Which personality and behavioral traits in dogs predict owner-reported overall herding ability?

  1. Personality traits (replication)

Methods

  1. Correlation between traits

  2. Aggregate traits into personality profiles

  3. Model selection for best-fit linear regression predicting overall herding ability

    • Based on AIC

Correlation between personality traits

Personality traits cluster into personality profiles

Profile 1

  • Confidence
  • Intelligence
  • Boldness
  • Timidness
  • Persistence
  • Initiative
  • Nervousness

Profile 2

  • Calmness
  • Patience
  • Hyperactivity
  • Excitability
  • Impulsiveness

Profile 3

  • Sociability
  • Friendliness

Profile 4

  • Trainability
  • Hyperactivity
  • Obedience
  • Nervousness
  • Stamina

Personality traits cluster into personality profiles

Personality profiles predict overall herding ability

Personality profile 1 ^ + Personality profile 4 v

+ spayed/neutered v + utility work exp ^ + competition exp ^

= overall herding ability

Research Question 1

Which personality and behavioral traits in dogs predict owner-reported overall herding ability?

  1. Personality traits (replication) [grey this text out or check off or something]

  2. Personality and behavioral traits

Methods

  1. Correlation between traits

  2. Aggregate traits into personality-behavior profiles

  3. Model selection for best-fit linear regression predicting overall herding ability

    • Based on BF from BIC

Correlation between personality and behavioral traits

Personality traits cluster into personality profiles

Profile 1

  • Cover
  • Anticipations
  • Natural ability
  • Confidence

Profile 2

  • Calmness
  • Patience
  • Hyperactivity
  • Excitability
  • Impulsiveness

Profile 3

  • Timidness
  • Nervousness

Profile 4

  • Sociability
  • Friendliness

Personality-behavior profiles predict overall herding ability

Personality-behavior profile 1 ^ + Personality-behavior profile 4 ^ + spayed/neutered v + utility work ^ + competition exp ^

= overall herding ability

Research Question 2

Do personality and behavioral traits in dogs and owner-rated overall herding ability predict herding performance in competitions?

Research Question 2

Sample size too small to run planned analyses.

Research Question 3

Do personality and behavioral traits in dogs and owner-rated herding ability differ across breeds and countries?

Methods

  • Compare American border collies to Australian kelpies [images of bc and kelpie here]

Dog samples differ on personality traits

American border collies were…

  • Less confident

  • Less calmn

  • Less patient

  • More impulsive

Average overall herding ability ratings were not different

Discussion

We partially replilcated previous work

  • Replicated Wilson et al.’ (2022) methods
  • Personality profiles in our best-fit model similar to profiles in previous best-fit model [loadings of PC1 and PC4] [wilson’s loadings for similar profiles]

We incorporated behavioral traits as predictors of ability

  • Personality and behavioral traits cluster into profiles
  • Personality-behavior profiles predict overall herding ability [re-show PC1 and 4 AND “equation” in words for model]

Applications

  • Breeding
  • Training
  • Selection

We found differences between dog samples

  • Compared to Australian kelpies, American border collies were.. Less: confident, calm, patient More: impulsive
  • No difference in herding ability

Possible explanations for differences

Dog

  • Breed differences
  • Country differences

Owner perceptions

  • Breed differences
  • Country differences

Conclusions

  • Small body of literature on herding dogs
  • We partially replicated previous findings
  • We expanded knowledge to include behavioral traits
  • We found evidence for herding dog population differences

There is no one-size-fits-all ideal herding dog

Personality and behavioral traits can be used to identify what “ideal” looks like in specific contexts.

Acknowledgements

[reminder to thank USBCHA]