Can humans help dogs’ problem-solving ability?

For all you dog lover, a study has found out that human encouragement may help your dogs better learn how to solve complex problems. Researchers closely examined the behaviour of search and rescue dogs and pet dogs when presented with the same problem-solving task. Both sets of dogs persisted at the task for about the same proportion of time, but the search and rescue dogs were more successful at solving the task when encouraged by their owners.


Lauren Brubaker from Oregon State University said, “The study, published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science, declares on how people can influence animal behaviour. However, the search and rescue dogs did not solve the task when they were alone. Further, pet dogs that solved the task with their owner present but not encouraging them also solved it when they were alone.”


Lauren Brubaker further said, “We thought that was unusual. Because search and rescue dogs are trained to work independently, we expected that they would out-perform pet dogs on this independent task and that wasn’t the case. This suggests that the behaviour of the owner, including the expectation of their dog and how they engage with their dog on a day-to-day basis, may influence the dog during a problem-solving task.”


Lauren Brubaker also added, “This leads us to believe that communication between search and rescue dogs and their owner could be more effective than communication between pet dogs and their owners.”