C-BARQ Dog Behavior Test
Posted this over on the Shiba side too, but since I think it's cool I thought I'd put it here too:
Found this cool little dog evaluation test and I thought others might enjoy it too. Basically what it does is it takes your responses about your dog's personality and compares them to the responses of other dogs generally and other dogs of your breed and scores them based on your dog's propensity toward them. It's really kind of neat.
Link: vetapps.vet.upenn.edu/cbarq
Zim scored high on separation problems (well, he does have separation anxiety), somewhat high on touch sensitivity (which is sort of true, but context specific---he's fine with most touching at home, but hates a lot more when he's at the vert) and high on all the miscellaneous items. He scored as really high on both grooming scores---licking himself and others excessively. Not sure I'd actually really have called his licking of people excessive, but he does it so much that I felt like it warranted a response that indicates how frequently he does it---this is a dog that will pin down someone's hand and lick it for a minute or two straight. I love it, but it's not exactly something he does infrequently.
So, how do your dog(s) score?
Found this cool little dog evaluation test and I thought others might enjoy it too. Basically what it does is it takes your responses about your dog's personality and compares them to the responses of other dogs generally and other dogs of your breed and scores them based on your dog's propensity toward them. It's really kind of neat.
Link: vetapps.vet.upenn.edu/cbarq
Zim scored high on separation problems (well, he does have separation anxiety), somewhat high on touch sensitivity (which is sort of true, but context specific---he's fine with most touching at home, but hates a lot more when he's at the vert) and high on all the miscellaneous items. He scored as really high on both grooming scores---licking himself and others excessively. Not sure I'd actually really have called his licking of people excessive, but he does it so much that I felt like it warranted a response that indicates how frequently he does it---this is a dog that will pin down someone's hand and lick it for a minute or two straight. I love it, but it's not exactly something he does infrequently.
So, how do your dog(s) score?
Comments
Sasha has a trainability, nonsocial fear flag, and energy flag (too low?), as well as a food stealing flag, and two each of begging and rolling.
Conker is... Bad looking.
Interestingly, he scored much lower than other Malamutes on his stranger-directed aggression, attention-seeking behavior and owner-directed aggression.
TK was the only Shikoku in the system, I guess (so all you Shikoku owners - enter your dogs!)... he scored incredibly high in trainability but also in stranger-directed aggression/fear (unsurprising) and in separation problems. I was surprised to find that he scored lower than "average" on his excitability (he's pretty damned excitable).
She was double flagged on stranger directed fear and touch sensitivity, single flagged with comparison of pop of nosocial fear, and single flag with no comparison for chewing, submissive peeing, staring, grooming others And an incomplete with familiar dog aggression and chasing.
I would be interested to see how she stacked up to other kai
Emmee tested as fairly average for a Finnish Lapphund, but without stranger-directed aggression that was reported as average and with more thieving tendencies.
Megan (who was my stepmom's dog) tested so close to average for a Sheltie that I'm a bit freaked out! Given she wasn't even entirely purebred.
I don't see a Kai comparison though.
Leo had zero aggression (which I knew). He had some flags though, which I also expected. He had single flags for nonsocial fear and attention seeking (and he really has a strong flight response when alarmed so that is no surprise on the first). He had double flags for touch sensitivity, which is true. He had flags for feces eating (but he only eats poop of rabbits!), for marking with urine, and for pulling on the leash, and a minor flag for hyperactivity.
It will be interesting to see how the other dogs turn out, as according to this test, they are probably going to show up with major problems. I think one of them does have major problems, but the others, I think, have really minor problems.
I did my dogs, and Bel had all sorts of flags, of course. Oskar turned up pretty high on stranger aggression, which is true, and he was higher, even, than most Akitas. I suspect other Akita people downplayed their mistrust of strangers (or they have very social akitas) because his reaction to strangers and to strange dogs is pretty mild, I think, compared to other Akitas. All though it's true he wouldn't let a stranger (person) on our property....I do think that's fairly typical, though.
It was kind of interesting to do, but I did think it was skewed toward a certain type of dog, in some ways, with the questions. (I mean, it doesn't really tell me anything at all to know that only of my NKs will fetch). I'm not sure what to do with the results overall?
One thing I got in the response which might be worth noting for those of you with rarer breeds is that...
"until there is a sufficient number of dogs of the same breed in our database (minimum is 40), your dog's scores will only be compared to dogs of all breeds. The reason for this is because the reference values (e.g., averages, percentiles) can be very unstable when the sample sizes are small which would make the comparison unreliable and less informative."
Now I need to see if I can get buhund lovers to fill this out