The Perceived Value of Behavioural Traits in Australian Livestock Herding Dogs Varies with the Operational Context

Abstract

This study investigated the value that handlers and breeders assign to various behavioural traits in Australian livestock herding dogs. Data were obtained from 811 handlers and breeders through the 'Australian Farm Dog Survey'. Respondents were asked to consider dogs within four contexts: utility (livestock herding in both paddocks and yards), mustering (livestock herding in paddocks and along livestock routes), yards (in and around sheds, sale-yards and transport vehicles), and trial (specifically a standard 3-sheep trial), and to rate the value of 16 working manoeuvres (movement sequences used in herding), 11 working attributes (skills or attributes used in herding) and five general attributes (personality traits ascribed to an individual dog). The most valued working manoeuvres were cast, force and gather. Bite, bark and backing were considered of little value in certain contexts, notably the trial context. Across all four contexts, the general attributes most valued in dogs were being trainable, motivated, confident and friendly, while control and trainability were the working attribute traits considered to be of most value. Excitability was revealed to be a 'Goldilocks' trait in that respondents preferred not too much or too little but a 'just right' amount in their preferred dog. Analysis indicated a handler preference for either specialised dogs for the utility context or dogs who are easy to work with because of a broad range of traits favoured in the yard context. These results reveal both generalities across and the need for specialisation within these four herding contexts. Further investigation may help to reveal how well handlers distinguish between innate and learnt behaviours when selecting and training livestock herding dogs. Identifying which group handlers fit into optimally may assist in selecting suitable dog-human dyads.

Keywords: boldness; herding; livestock; survey; traits; working dog.

Figure 1

Boxplot of shyness–boldness expression in the ideal dog per herding context: the box spans the interquartile range of the values; middle 50% of the values lie within the box with a diamond indicating the mean. The whiskers extend beyond the box to represent the range of the data. Respondents marked shyness–boldness expression on a visual scale that used the descriptive phrases ‘extremely shy’ and ‘extremely bold’ at either end. * p = 0.006 ** p < 0.001 *** p = 0.004.

Figure 2

Amount of five (5) general attributes in the ideal dog across the four herding contexts. Respondents’ ratings: A—utility; B—mustering; C—yard; D—trial.

Figure 3

The value of eleven (11) working attributes across the four herding contexts. Respondents’ ratings: A—utility; B—mustering; C—yard; D—trial.

Figure 4

The value of sixteen (16) working manoeuvres across the four herding contexts: Respondent’s ratings: A—utility; B—mustering; C—yard; D—trial.

Figure 5

Reported ease of training for sixteen (16) working manoeuvres.

Figure 6

Cluster dendogram showing hierarchical, agglomerative clustering of Euclidean Distances of preference scores for analysed traits. The type of work or competition for which a trait was favoured by respondents is indicated by: Green = utility, Red = mustering, Blue = yard, Yellow = trial. Dendogram shows, from left to right, Group Three, Group Two, Group One.

Figure 7

Cluster group preferences by trait: Boxplot demonstrating the different medians, interquartile ranges and whisker lengths of preferences for each trait in the three clusters of respondents shown in Figure 6.

Figure 8

Associations of each cluster group with working and competition contexts. Each group would be expected to have equal representation across each herding context; the chart indicates which group’s preferences were over or underrepresented for each herding context.