By Kim Jones Gilliam

Different dog breeds have been developed to handle different tasks, tasks that they naturally excel at thanks to their instinctive drives. So it should come as no surprise when your Border Collie pup starts herding your children as they run around the yard or your Brittany Spaniel pulls on the leash as it tries to chase local wildlife on a walk.

Recognizing a dog’s natural drives can help you select one that would be a good fit for your family and lifestyle. Plus, they can inform activities your dog would enjoy. Have you always wanted to do agility training? Then a herding breed might be your best bet, as agility mimics the cognitive and physical challenges of herding. Drives can also help explain unwanted behaviors, like why your terrier digs holes in the backyard as it tries to hunt and burrow or why your hound barks at every new scent as it tries to track it.

A 2022 study published in “Science,” a peer-reviewed academic journal, based on a survey of dogs through the Darwin’s Ark project, suggested that a dog’s genetic wiring might not weigh as heavily in their personality as once assumed. Researchers studied more than 18,000 dogs – half purebred and half mixed-breed – and surveyed their owners on topics that included their dog’s sociability with other dogs and humans, ability to follow directions and interest in toys. The study found that breed explained only about 9% of an individual dog’s behavior; the more important predictors were how they were socialized, raised and trained.

Later that year, a National Institutes of Health report responded that many of the behaviors linked with certain lineages of dogs related directly to their purpose. Researchers surveyed more than 40,000 dog owners using the Canine Behavioral Assessment & Research Questionnaire and compared data to the breed and lineage of each dog. They calculated 14 behavior scores for each purebred dog: trainability, attachment and attention-seeking, predatory chasing, dog-directed fear, excitability, owner-directed aggression, separation-related problems, non-social fear, familiar dog aggression, touch sensitivity, dog-directed aggression, stranger-directed aggression and stranger-directed fear.

This study’s findings confirmed many ideas about behaviors that dog experts had long thought to be true:

• Trainability was generally easier in breeds that were of herder, pointer-spaniel and Retriever lineage. These breeds were more attentive to their handler’s cues to herd livestock or to find, flush or retrieve birds.
• Dogs in the scenthound lineages can be harder to train as they tend to “follow their noses” and be independent, ignoring human cues when they’re tracking.
• Sheepdogs and retrievers can be easier to train as they have less of a prey drive and aggression. They attend more to their handler’s directions and don’t attack livestock or prey animals that they are expected to retrieve without damage.
• Terriers had the most predatory behavior and dog-directed aggression as their jobs are to fearlessly find small mammals, never backing down from a challenge.
• Terriers and scent hounds were found to have increased non-social fears – like objects and situations, rather than people.
• Researchers have theorized that herding dogs are hyper-attentive to environmental cues so they can herd more effectively, but it also makes them more prone to thunderstorm phobias.
• Companion and toy dogs were found to display both increased social and non-social fear. These fears seem natural, especially when everyone and everything around you is so much bigger than you are.

The American Kennel Club notes that it’s important to recognize that a dog’s breed personality descriptions detail the idealized dog of that breed – it’s not a guarantee for every dog of that breed. Every individual dog is just that: an individual.

The writer co-owns Frolick Dogs, a canine sports club in Alexandria.