Does Your Dog Match Your Personality?
Though most dog enthusiasts will say they just love any type of dog – we all secretly have our favourites. Even our Holidays4Dogs carer questionnaire asks for thoughts on favourite breeds. Does your choice of dog match your personality? Many claim it does. In this article, we look into the question of what your choice of dog may say about you!
My favourite dog has always been the Border collie. I hadn’t particularly hankered after a Border collie before I got my first one. However, I was very young and being in a position to get my own dog, I didn’t care what it was. I just wanted a dog. Any dog!
As it happened, I saw an advert for a ‘useless sheepdog’ and that was that. I was smitten. Over the years I have had numerous collies, all of them ‘preloved’ failed sheepdogs. However, never at any point, did I wonder if my choice of dog breed would suit my personality.
Does your dog match your personality?
Scientists tell us that, sometimes,
our choice of pet dog does indeed reflect our own personas.
In 2012 the British Psychological Society found that dog breeds do match certain aspects of an owner’s personality.
Researchers worked in collaboration with the U.K. Kennel Club. It involved an online questionnaire with 1,000 participants who owned purebred dogs. The aim was to discover whether a person’s choice of pooch matched their personality.
The questionnaire set out to measure five specific personality traits; openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
The breeds of dog were represented as official Kennel Club categories; gun dogs, pastoral, terriers, toy, utility, hound and working breeds.
Results of the canine personality matches.
The results showed that owners of pastoral and utility breeds tended to be the most extrovert. Owners of toy dogs in the study were the most imaginative and open minded, with gundog owners being the most agreeable of all the owners in the study.
There were no peer reviews for the study. It might be that people are naturally drawn to dog breeds which match their personality and lifestyle.
However, while I am an avid lover of pastoral and working breeds, I would definitely not consider myself to be outgoing, or extrovert.
I am an outdoorsy type of person, though, with a love of the countryside and an interest in the old traditional working breeds. Therefore, a border collie as a breed of dog, certainly fits the bill in this respect.
Final thoughts.
I now only have one dog at the moment, a rescue Chihuahua.
I had no previous desire, or inclination, to own a toy dog! She kind of fell into my lap. A neat trick, considering it’s one of her favourite places to be!
As an owner of a toy dog, I am apparently imaginative and open – which would seem fair enough.
Indeed, I suppose I have to be because Peggy has a challenging personality that needs me to be open minded, flexible and imaginative!
What about you? Do you think your personality matches the type of companion dog you have?
