Boredom in Dogs: Does It Exist, and How Can It Be Measured?

1. An Everyday Word with a Scientific Problem

1.1 Why the Question Matters

In conversations about dogs, boredom is a convenient explanation. It is used for chewing, digging, barking, following people around, pacing, nudging and destroying things when the dog is left alone. It also comes with a ready solution: more exercise, more toys, more activities.

The convenience of the label hides two questions. The first is whether dogs experience boredom at all in a sense that can be defined and tested. The second is whether boredom, if it exists in dogs, can be told apart from other states that produce similar behavior. A dog that chews furniture may be under-stimulated, but it may also be frustrated, anxious when left alone, in pain or over-tired and unable to settle. These states call for different and sometimes opposite responses, so calling everything boredom is not harmless shorthand.

1.2 What the Evidence Looks Like

Research on animal boredom is young. Its concepts come from human psychology, its first systematic experiments come from farmed mink, and further work has followed in ferrets, rats and pigs. Dog-specific research is thin: a literature search yields one study on waking inactivity in shelter dogs, one large owner survey on problems when dogs are left alone and one preprint on how people read emotional states in dog videos. None of them tested boredom in dogs with the experimental methods developed in other species.

This is a finding in its own right, and it shapes how the rest of this article should be read. Where dog data exist, they are reported with their limits. Where the argument relies on other species, that is stated.

2. What Boredom Means in Human Research

2.1 Wanting to Engage but Failing

Psychologists have defined boredom in many ways, but the definitions share a core. A widely cited synthesis of psychodynamic, existential, arousal and cognitive theories concluded that boredom is universally understood as "the aversive experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity" (Eastwood, Frischen, Fenske & Smilek, 2012).

Two parts of this definition matter for animals. Boredom is aversive: an unpleasant state, not a neutral absence of activity. And it involves motivation: a bored person wants to do something but cannot engage. This separates boredom from relaxation, where there is no wish for more, and from tiredness, where the capacity to engage is reduced.

The authors also proposed an attention-based definition: boredom occurs when a person cannot engage attention with the information needed for satisfying activity, is aware of this failure and attributes the cause to the environment (Eastwood et al., 2012). The last two components depend on self-awareness and attribution, which cannot be assessed in a dog. The first, a failure to engage despite motivation, can in principle be translated into behavior.

2.2 Attention and Monotony

A related line of research describes boredom as "an inability to engage with one's environment despite the motivation to do so" (Danckert & Merrifield, 2018). In a brain imaging study comparing rest, a sustained attention task and videos that induced boredom or interest, the authors interpreted boredom as a failure to engage executive control networks when a task is monotonous. They also describe boredom as a negative experience associated with depression and aggression. These are human data, and the neural details cannot be transferred to dogs. The structure of the concept can: boredom arises from a mismatch between the motivation to engage and what the environment offers.

2.3 Seeking Stimulation, Even Unpleasant Stimulation

In a series of eleven studies, participants spent 6 to 15 minutes alone in a room with nothing to do but think (Wilson et al., 2014). They typically did not enjoy it, they enjoyed mundane external activities much more, and many preferred to give themselves electric shocks rather than be left alone with their thoughts. Most people, the authors concluded, seem to prefer doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative.

This suggests a behavioral signature. If under-stimulation is aversive enough, an individual may seek stimulation of almost any kind, including stimulation it would normally avoid. That prediction became the basis of the first experimental test of boredom in animals.

3. Can Animals Be Bored? The Biological Argument

3.1 A Function for an Unpleasant State

A conceptual review by the welfare scientist Charlotte Burn argued that boredom is likely to have adaptive value in motivating exploration and learning, and that many animals may possess the basic neurological mechanisms to support it (Burn, 2017). From this perspective, boredom does not require reflection about one's own life. It signals that the current environment offers too little, and that it is worth looking for something else.

The review also argued that chronic, inescapable boredom is aversive, can harm neural, cognitive and behavioral flexibility, and puts captive wild and domesticated animals especially at risk (Burn, 2017).

3.2 Two Faces: Restlessness and Drowsiness

Burn's central proposal is that boredom combines a negative emotional tone with a level of arousal that is not optimal for the individual (Burn, 2017). A bored animal may therefore show signs of both high and low arousal. In a later study, Burn and colleagues summarized the framework: boredom occurs when stimulation is insufficiently relevant or varied to maintain optimal arousal, and animals in this state are proposed to show arousal-seeking behavior, such as restlessness, sensation-seeking and escape attempts, as well as low-arousal behavior, such as drowsiness, yawning and awake inactivity (Burn, Ng & Parker, 2025).

Burn also proposed three aspects that could be measured: avoidance of monotony, an inability to maintain wakefulness, and trained behavior indicating that time is perceived as passing slowly. The review further suggested that boredom may distort time perception and disrupt sleep (Burn, 2017). These are research proposals, and none has been tested in dogs. The double profile matters for interpretation: neither "the dog is restless" nor "the dog lies around a lot" is, on its own, evidence for or against boredom.

3.3 Boredom as a Welfare Concern

A review asking whether boredom is an animal welfare concern answered yes (Meagher, 2019). Monotonous, stimulus-poor environments may produce a state with increased motivation for diverse stimuli, and this state is likely aversive. Drawing mainly on mink research, older farm and laboratory studies and human research, the review concluded that boredom may lead to depression-like states or self-injurious behavior and that practical ways to identify it are needed. Suggested responses included giving animals a choice in the level of stimulation and providing appropriate cognitive challenge. The abstract makes no statement about dogs.

The Five Domains Model lists boredom among the negative experiences that confinement and isolation of social animals in barren environments may produce, alongside anxiety, frustration, helplessness, loneliness and depression (Mellor, 2017). The same paper cautions that behavioral indices may not distinguish helplessness, loneliness and boredom as easily as states such as fear or frustration, so identifying them requires even greater caution. One illustrative grading example concerns tethering or caging of dogs, with "inferred boredom/depression" graded by the proportion of time spent tethered or caged. The word "inferred" is accurate: this is a welfare judgment, not a measurement (how welfare and quality of life are assessed).

4. Why Boredom Is Hard to Study in Animals

4.1 No Verbal Report

Human boredom research relies on asking people how they feel. Animals cannot answer, so any claim about their boredom has to rest on behavior, physiology or choices, and on a theory linking these to the state. This applies to all emotional states in dogs, which is why careful definitions matter (how behavior is defined and measured in research). Boredom is a particularly difficult case, because the behaviors associated with it are not specific.

4.2 Overlapping States

Lying still with the eyes open can mean rest, contentment, vigilance, fatigue, pain, apathy or boredom. Restlessness can mean boredom, but also frustration, anxiety, discomfort or hunger. Chewing can be exploration, teething, stress relief or a learned way of getting attention. A single observation rarely allows a conclusion, and the alternatives make different predictions, which is why section 7 discusses them in detail.

4.3 Behavior Is Not Emotion

A behavior is not the same as the emotion that may underlie it (why behavior and emotion must be kept apart). The same behavior can arise from different states, and the same state can produce different behavior in different individuals. Boredom research has responded by looking not at single behaviors but at patterns of response that differ between states. The most important example is the mink paradigm.

5. The Mink Paradigm: How Boredom Was First Measured

5.1 Interest in Stimuli of All Kinds

The first experimental test of boredom in a non-human mammal compared farmed mink in standard, non-enriched cages with mink in complex, enriched cages (Meagher & Mason, 2012). Twenty-nine mink took part, 13 enriched and 16 non-enriched. Each was exposed to ten stimuli classified in advance as aversive, such as puffs of air, rewarding, such as objects that evoked chasing, or ambiguous and neutral, such as candles. The researchers measured latency to contact, contact duration and time oriented toward each stimulus.

Mink from non-enriched cages contacted all stimuli faster and spent longer oriented toward or in contact with them, although by stimulus category this was significant only for the ambiguous stimuli. With category removed from the analysis, interest in all stimuli was consistently higher in the non-enriched mink, and they also consumed more food rewards (Meagher & Mason, 2012).

5.2 Apathy, Anhedonia and Boredom Make Different Predictions

The strength of the design lies in its logic. Animals in barren housing are described as bored, but also as apathetic or depressed, and these states should produce different patterns (Meagher & Mason, 2012). Boredom, as a negative state caused by under-stimulation, should increase interest in stimuli of all kinds. Apathy should decrease interest in all stimuli. Anhedonia, the loss of pleasure that is a core symptom of depression, should specifically decrease interest in normally rewarding stimuli.

The non-enriched mink showed no evidence of apathy or depression, but a heightened investigation of diverse stimuli consistent with boredom. The authors concluded that boredom can be operationalized and assessed empirically in non-human animals and reduced by environmental enrichment (Meagher & Mason, 2012). The same logic was later formulated for pigs: apathetic animals should show less interest in stimuli of all valences, depressed animals less interest in positive stimuli only, bored animals more interest in all stimuli, including negative ones (Hintze, Heigl & Winckler, 2024).

5.3 Replication and the Problem of "Lying Awake"

In the original study, time spent lying down while awake was positively associated with certain measures of exploration, whereas stereotypic behavior such as pacing was not (Meagher & Mason, 2012). This raised the hope of a simple cage-side indicator, although the authors noted that the result required replication.

A replication with 20 male mink again found more interest in stimuli in non-enriched animals where housing differed, with significant effects for aversive stimuli (Meagher, Campbell & Mason, 2017). Lying still but awake was again linked to interest in stimuli, though not in the same pattern, and earlier correlations with locomotor stereotypies were not replicated. A later study then reported in its title that boredom-like exploratory responses in mink were rapidly reduced by enrichment but were unrelated to stereotypic behavior or lying awake (Polanco, Meagher & Mason, 2021). As summarized by Burn et al. (2025), it again found increased interaction with ambiguous or aversive cues in mink housed without enrichment.

The stimulus-interest response has therefore held up, while the link to lying awake has not. For dogs, this is a warning: an easily observed behavior that looks like boredom may not be a reliable indicator of it.

5.4 Ferrets, Rats and Pigs

In 14 female laboratory ferrets, animals received an hour of "playtime" in a room with a ball pool, paper bags, balls with bells and a familiar interactive person on three consecutive mornings (Burn, Raffle & Bizley, 2020). On the fourth morning, their home-cage behavior was compared with that of cage-mates without playtime, and the treatments were then swapped. Control ferrets lay awake with their eyes open more, screeched more, slept less and contacted negative and ambiguous stimuli for longer, while contact with positive stimuli did not differ. The authors suggested that playtime reduced both sub-optimal arousal and restless sensation-seeking, but noted that blinding of the observer failed and replication is needed.

In a cross-over study, 20 rats searched pairs of containers for a hidden reward in a monotonous or a varied version of the same task (Burn et al., 2025). Monotony significantly increased exit-directed behavior, but no other effects were significant and drowsiness indicators did not change. The authors emphasized that only one predicted behavioral indicator responded significantly and that the results alone do not provide clear evidence of boredom.

In pigs, researchers first validated the stimuli themselves (Hintze et al., 2024). Thirty-nine pigs were exposed to twelve stimuli pre-classified as positive, ambiguous or negative. Responses matched the pre-classification for many stimuli, but five had to be re-classified, and age influenced some responses. The stimulus-interest test only works once it is known which stimuli a species actually perceives as positive, neutral or negative. No such validation exists for dogs.

6. What Has Been Shown in Dogs

6.1 Waking Inactivity in Shelter Dogs

A dog study relevant to the boredom debate actually examined a different question: do shelter dogs that spend more time "awake but motionless" in their kennel show signs of a depression-like state (Harvey et al., 2019)? Awake but motionless was defined precisely: completely still, no head, body or ear movements, eyes open and apparently staring, lying, sitting or standing, not vocalizing, for at least five seconds. Anhedonia was tested via interest in, and consumption of, a food-filled rubber toy. Experts also rated videos of the toy test with a qualitative behavior assessment, without knowing each dog's inactivity level.

Ninety dogs from seven UK shelters met the inclusion criteria; after exclusions, 57 were tested, 14 in a pilot phase and 43 from six shelters in the main study (Harvey et al., 2019). Dogs relinquished by their owners spent more time awake but motionless than strays or dogs held for legal reasons. Only one significant association with the toy test was found, once length of stay was accounted for, and it ran opposite to the depression hypothesis: more inactive dogs engaged with the toy for longer per bout. Inactivity also correlated with the experts' ratings of "depressed" and "bored", which overlapped with each other.

The depression hypothesis was not supported, and the authors discussed whether the results might tentatively support a boredom-like state, since longer engagement with an appealing toy would fit the prediction of increased interest (Harvey et al., 2019). They were explicit about the limits: responses to neutral and slightly aversive stimuli were not tested, behavior was recorded by scan sampling rather than continuously, comparisons in more varied environments, including homes, are needed, and this inactivity might simply belong to the normal repertoire of kenneled dogs. The study is a cautious first step with a shelter population, one significant association and expert ratings.

6.2 A "Boredom-Related" Pattern in Separation Problems

The second source comes from veterinary behavioral medicine. In a large owner survey, the presenting signs of 762 dogs with problems when left alone were analyzed statistically (de Assis, Matos, Pike, Burman & Mills, 2020). The survey initially covered 2,757 dogs; a principal components analysis in 345 dogs was replicated in 417 further dogs, and cluster analysis divided the population into four groups, labeled exit frustration, redirected reactive, reactive inhibited and boredom-related problems.

The boredom-related cluster made up 18% of the population. It showed inconsistent signs, no immediate frustration directed at the owner and relatively rare exit frustration (24%). Signs of social panic were the most frequent group of signs (78.8%), but these dogs showed fewer signs than dogs in other clusters (de Assis et al., 2020). The authors' most parsimonious explanation was that these dogs had learned that being alone is aversive because of a lack of stimulation, and they chose the name "boredom-related" until empirical evidence clarifies a better alternative. The label is an interpretation of an owner-reported pattern, not a measured state. Still, a substantial subgroup did not fit the picture of panic-like separation distress (what is known about separation distress in dogs).

6.3 Experts Disagree on What Boredom Looks Like

A preprint, not peer reviewed at the time of writing, adds a telling detail (Samet et al., 2025). In an online survey, 4,133 members of the public rated the emotional and motivational states of dogs in 30 silent videos, and their ratings were compared with those of eleven experts. Eight of nine predefined states showed high agreement among experts. "Boredom" was removed because the experts did not agree on it. The result is preliminary, but it fits the caution that boredom is harder to identify from behavior than fear or frustration (Mellor, 2017). If experienced observers disagree, owners should be careful about concluding boredom from single moments.

6.4 Restriction, Rest and Novelty

In a classic experiment, beagles were moved from enriched, spacious outdoor group housing to six weeks of solitary housing in small indoor kennels (Beerda et al., 1999). They showed lower postures, lasting increases in autogrooming, paw lifting and vocalizing, and incidents of coprophagy and repetitive behavior. When challenged with new situations outside the kennel, they showed more tail wagging, nosing, circling and changes of activity than during group housing. The authors interpreted these changes as chronic stress, not boredom. The heightened response to new situations is compatible with a boredom-like increase in interest, but the study was not designed to separate these explanations (how stress is measured in dogs).

A study of 15 shelter dogs looked at rest from the other side (Owczarczak-Garstecka & Burman, 2016). More daytime resting was associated with a more positive judgment bias, less repetitive behavior and more time rated as relaxed by staff. In that busy setting, resting more appeared to be a sign of better welfare. Together with the shelter study on waking inactivity, this shows that inactivity is not one thing: resting and staring while awake may mean different things.

Dogs are clearly attracted to novelty. Offered a new toy alongside two familiar ones, 17 dogs chose the new toy first in 38 of 50 tests (Kaulfuß & Mills, 2008). Kennel-housed dogs lose interest in a toy over repeated sessions, and changing the toy, rather than lengthening the break, restores play (Pullen, Merrill & Bradshaw, 2012). Dogs respond to variation, but a preference for novelty is not evidence of a prior aversive state.

6.5 What Has Not Been Shown

No study has exposed dogs from different environments to a validated set of positive, neutral and negative stimuli, as was done in mink. No study has tested Burn's proposed indicators in dogs, such as altered time perception or a combination of restlessness and drowsiness under monotony. The studies reviewed here did not directly measure boredom in companion dogs at home, and there is no validated owner questionnaire for boredom comparable to the one for frustration (McPeake, Collins, Zulch & Mills, 2019). Boredom in dogs is plausible on biological grounds and consistent with a few dog findings, but not demonstrated with methods that separate it from its neighbors.

7. Telling Boredom Apart from Other States

7.1 Frustration

Frustration is an emotional reaction after an expectation is violated, typically when a reward is delayed, reduced or withheld (McPeake et al., 2019). It has a target: the dog wants something particular and does not get it. Boredom is defined by a general lack of sufficient stimulation, with motivation for almost anything different (Burn et al., 2025). Frustration tends to be directed at the blocked goal, such as barking at a barrier or scratching at the door behind which the owner disappeared. In the separation study, clusters with exit frustration and owner-directed frustration were distinct from the boredom-related cluster, in which these signs were rare or absent (de Assis et al., 2020). The two states can occur together, and boredom may turn into frustration when attempts to find stimulation fail (what frustration is and how it shows).

7.2 Apathy and Learned Helplessness

In the mink paradigm, apathy predicts reduced interest in all stimuli, the opposite of boredom (Meagher & Mason, 2012). Learned helplessness has a long history in dog research, and a synthesis of rodent work later reversed its interpretation: passivity appears to be the default response to prolonged aversive events, and what is learned is control (Maier & Seligman, 2016). There is no canine equivalent of these neural findings, but the point stands: a dog that has stopped responding is not necessarily bored, and adding stimulation misses its situation (what learned helplessness means in dogs). The shelter study found no support for a depression-like state in inactive dogs (Harvey et al., 2019), which illustrates that inactivity can be read in opposite ways and that only the response to stimuli can separate them.

7.3 Fatigue and Normal Rest

Dogs rest and sleep for a large part of the day, and most of that rest is normal. Sleep is linked to recovery, memory and emotional processing (what sleep does for dogs), and in shelter dogs more daytime rest was associated with better welfare indicators (Owczarczak-Garstecka & Burman, 2016). Fatigue differs from boredom in that the capacity to engage is reduced, not the opportunity. A tired dog offered something interesting may glance at it and go back to sleep; a bored dog, if the concept from other species applies, should respond with increased interest. This has not been tested in dogs.

In practice: A dog lying quietly in its bed after a walk usually does not need entertaining. In our experience, the more common problem in family dogs is too little rest rather than too much: dogs that are constantly involved in household activity and rarely get long, undisturbed periods of sleep. This is an observation from practice, not a study result.

7.4 Separation-Related Problems

Damage, barking and restlessness when left alone are often attributed to boredom. The large survey shows why this needs care: the boredom-related pattern was one of four clusters, alongside patterns dominated by exit frustration or reactivity, and signs of social panic occurred in all of them (de Assis et al., 2020). The same damaged door frame can result from panic-like distress, frustration, reactivity to outside noise or a lack of stimulation, and the damage alone does not tell them apart.

7.5 Pain and Illness

Pain can change activity, restlessness and the ability to settle, and dogs often show it in ways owners do not recognize (why dogs often hide pain). A dog that suddenly lies around more, or keeps getting up because it cannot find a comfortable position, may be uncomfortable rather than bored.

In practice: When a previously settled dog begins to show "boredom behaviors" without an obvious change in its daily life, we recommend a veterinary check before changing activity or training. Adding activity to a dog in pain can make both the pain and the behavior worse. This is a practice recommendation, not a study finding.

7.6 Over-arousal

A dog that follows its owner, nudges, whines and cannot settle in the evening may be under-stimulated, or over-aroused after a day with too much going on. The interventions are opposites: more meaningful engagement in one case, less input and more rest in the other (how attention-seeking behavior is analyzed). Because boredom itself is proposed to include restless, arousal-seeking behavior (Burn, 2017), restlessness alone does not show which state is present.

8. What Owners Call Boredom

8.1 Destruction, Attention-Seeking and Repetitive Behavior

In everyday language, "bored" covers destruction, such as chewing and digging, attention-seeking, such as barking at the owner or nudging, and repetitive behavior, such as pacing or chasing lights and shadows. In each group, under-stimulation is one possible contributor among several. Functional analyses of repetitive behavior showed that what maintains it differs between dogs: in some, the owner's response maintained it, in others the stimulus itself (Hall, Protopopova & Wynne, 2015). Burn and colleagues cite this work and the separation study as examples of why understanding boredom matters for distinguishing causes of problem behavior (Burn et al., 2025). Calling repetitive behavior boredom skips the analysis that determines what helps (what drives compulsive behavior in dogs).

8.2 Why the Label Can Mislead

The label can mislead in three ways. It can hide other causes, especially pain, anxiety when left alone and over-arousal. It can lead to more stimulation for dogs that need less. And it can make owners overlook what the behavior achieves: if chewing a shoe reliably brings the owner running, attention may maintain the behavior, whatever started it.

Boredom should be the conclusion of an analysis, not its starting point. Useful questions are concrete: When does the behavior occur? What happens before and after it? Does it change when the routine changes? Does the dog settle when given the chance? Is it looking for stimulation of any kind, or for something specific?

8.3 Punishing "Boredom Behaviors"

Destructive behavior and nuisance barking often lead to punishment. Punishment can stop a behavior in the moment, which is why it is used. The more important question is what the dog learns from it, and at what cost. If the underlying state is under-stimulation, punishment adds an aversive event to an already aversive situation without changing the cause. If the cause is anxiety when left alone, frustration or pain, punishment can increase stress and strain the relationship, and the dog may learn to avoid the owner rather than to settle. In none of these cases does it give the dog what was missing.

9. How Boredom Could Be Measured in Dogs

9.1 Adapting the Stimulus-Interest Test

One possible research approach is to adapt the mink paradigm to dogs, with species-specific validation. This requires stimuli that dogs reliably perceive as positive, neutral or mildly negative, validated as in pigs (Hintze et al., 2024). Dogs from different environments, or the same dogs before and after a change in routine, could then be compared for latency to approach, contact duration and time oriented toward each stimulus. Increased interest across all categories would indicate a boredom-like state, reduced interest across all categories apathy, and reduced interest in rewarding stimuli anhedonia (Meagher & Mason, 2012). The shelter study tested only one appealing stimulus, and its authors named the missing neutral and aversive stimuli as the key gap (Harvey et al., 2019). Mildly negative stimuli would have to be genuinely mild, such as an unfamiliar smell, and the dog would always need the option to avoid them.

9.2 Inactivity, Defined Precisely

Waking inactivity can be recorded without disturbing the dog, but the mink research shows the risk: an initial association with boredom-like responses was not consistently confirmed (Meagher et al., 2017; Polanco et al., 2021). In dogs, awake-but-motionless time was associated with expert ratings of boredom and depression (Harvey et al., 2019), while daytime resting was associated with better welfare indicators (Owczarczak-Garstecka & Burman, 2016). Inactivity as an indicator therefore needs definitions that separate sleep, relaxed rest and staring wakefulness, continuous recording and validation against other measures.

9.3 Choice, Time and Cognitive Measures

Burn's framework suggests further approaches: training animals to indicate how long an interval seems and testing whether intervals seem longer under monotony, or choice tests asking whether animals avoid a monotonous situation (Burn, 2017). Cognitive bias tests, used as indirect measures of affective state, could be added, with their own limits (what cognitive bias tests can and cannot show). None of these has been applied to boredom in dogs. Most likely, only a combination will work: increased interest across stimulus types, a mix of restlessness and drowsiness, a change when the environment is varied, and the exclusion of pain, fatigue, frustration and anxiety, ideally studied in homes.

10. Practical Implications

10.1 Variation, Not Volume

If boredom is a response to monotony, the remedy is not more activity but more relevant variation. Enrichment reduced boredom-like responses in mink (Meagher & Mason, 2012), playtime reduced them in ferrets (Burn et al., 2020), and in dogs a new toy restored play after habituation (Pullen et al., 2012). What these findings share is new information, not more of the same (what enrichment changes and how to measure it).

In practice: For many family dogs, variety in the walk itself does more than any toy: a new route, time to sniff at length, a different surface, a short search game along the way. We often see that dogs who get this kind of variation settle better at home afterward. This is an observation from practice, not a controlled finding.

10.2 Engagement That Involves the Dog

Activities in which the dog's own behavior produces the result appear to matter. In 12 beagles, solving a task to obtain a reward was associated with more tail wagging and activity than receiving the same reward without effort, which the authors read as positive arousal linked to achievement (McGowan, Rehn, Norling & Keeling, 2014). Two weeks of nosework shifted a cognitive bias measure in pet dogs in an optimistic direction, compared with heelwork (Duranton & Horowitz, 2019). Neither study measured boredom, but both suggest that using the dog's own abilities may be worth more than passive stimulation (how the dog's nose shapes behavior).

The evidence on food puzzles is more modest. Of 38 pet dogs given a choice, only one strongly preferred working for food on a snuffle mat, 22 preferred freely available food, and 30 were nevertheless willing to use the mat (Rothkoff, Feng & Byosiere, 2024). Exercise also has a role, but more exercise is not the same as more variety (what exercise does and does not change).

10.3 The Risk of Overstimulation

The boredom explanation has a typical side effect: programs that fill the dog's day with puzzles, long walks, training, dog parks and games. Some dogs become more aroused, sleep less and show the very behaviors that were attributed to boredom. The welfare review on boredom recommends giving animals a choice in the level of stimulation (Meagher, 2019), and that includes the option of doing nothing. Passive stimulation such as music has mainly been studied as a calming aid, not as a remedy for boredom (what sound and music do for dogs).

In practice: Before adding activities, it helps to record a dog's day for a week: when it rests, when it is active and what happens before the problem behavior. In our experience, this often shows that the dog lacks rest rather than activity, or that the problem is tied to a particular time of day. This is a practice recommendation.

10.4 Observe Before Labeling

Before calling a dog bored, check whether pain, fatigue, over-arousal, anxiety when left alone or frustration could explain the behavior. If boredom remains the best explanation, a useful test is whether the behavior decreases when the dog's day becomes more varied without becoming more hectic, and whether the dog rests well afterward.

11. Summary at a Glance

Human research defines boredom as the aversive experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity (Eastwood et al., 2012), linked to a failure to engage with monotony (Danckert & Merrifield, 2018); people may even choose unpleasant stimulation over none (Wilson et al., 2014). A biological perspective proposes that boredom may have adaptive value in motivating exploration and combines a negative tone with sub-optimal arousal, so that animals may show restlessness and drowsiness (Burn, 2017).

In mink, barren housing increased interest in stimuli of all kinds, including aversive ones, which separates boredom from apathy and anhedonia (Meagher & Mason, 2012; Meagher et al., 2017); the link to lying awake did not hold up consistently (Polanco et al., 2021). Similar responses were reported in ferrets, partially in rats, and the method is being developed in pigs (Burn et al., 2020; Burn et al., 2025; Hintze et al., 2024).

In dogs, waking inactivity in shelter dogs was tentatively linked to boredom (Harvey et al., 2019), a large survey found a boredom-related pattern among dogs with problems when left alone (de Assis et al., 2020), and experts in a preprint did not agree on what boredom looks like (Samet et al., 2025). No study has applied the full stimulus-interest test to dogs. Boredom must be distinguished from frustration, apathy, fatigue, normal rest, separation problems, pain and over-arousal.

12. Research Gaps and Critical Appraisal

12.1 No Direct Test in Dogs

The full stimulus-interest test was not used in the dog studies reviewed here. The mink studies used 29 and 20 animals and stimuli validated for that species (Meagher & Mason, 2012; Meagher et al., 2017), and the pig study shows that stimulus validation alone is a substantial project (Hintze et al., 2024). Until dogs from different environments are compared with a validated stimulus set, claims about boredom in dogs remain inferences from other species.

12.2 Populations and Settings

Two especially relevant peer-reviewed dog studies reviewed here concern shelter dogs and owner-reported separation problems. The shelter study included 43 dogs in its main phase and tested one appealing stimulus (Harvey et al., 2019). The separation study relied on owner reports and statistical clustering, and its boredom label is the authors' interpretation (de Assis et al., 2020). The beagle restriction study was a laboratory experiment framed as chronic stress (Beerda et al., 1999). None of these transfers directly to family dogs at home.

12.3 Indicators That Are Not Specific

Inactivity, restlessness and interest in novelty fit boredom and other states. The lying-awake indicator in mink did not hold up consistently (Polanco et al., 2021). In dogs, daytime rest was associated with better welfare indicators in 15 shelter dogs (Owczarczak-Garstecka & Burman, 2016), while awake-but-motionless time was associated with negative expert ratings (Harvey et al., 2019). Without precise definitions and validation, simple indicators can point in opposite directions.

12.4 Observer Agreement and Blinding

Experts did not agree on boredom ratings in a large video study, a result from a preprint (Samet et al., 2025). In the ferret study, blinding failed (Burn et al., 2020), and in the rat study only one of several predicted behaviors changed (Burn et al., 2025). These are not reasons to dismiss the field, but they show how hard reliable measurement is.

12.5 Untested Proposals

Altered time perception and disrupted sleep in bored animals are proposals that have not been tested in dogs (Burn, 2017). Welfare frameworks that list boredom caution that it is harder to identify from behavior than other states (Mellor, 2017), and no validated owner questionnaire for boredom in dogs exists, in contrast to frustration (McPeake et al., 2019).

13. Conclusion

Boredom in dogs is plausible. The argument that boredom motivates exploration applies to a curious, social species, and experiments in mink, ferrets and rats show that boredom-like states can be measured in mammals and reduced by more varied environments. The few dog studies are consistent with this picture.

But plausible is not demonstrated. The dog studies reviewed here did not use a full stimulus-interest test to distinguish boredom from neighboring states; this selection also lacks a direct study of boredom in family dogs at home. Until then, "the dog is bored" is a hypothesis to check, not an explanation. The most useful lesson is the logic of the mink paradigm: broader interest in different novel stimuli could be a marker of a boredom-like state, but this has not been validated in dogs. A dog that cannot settle, is in pain or is anxious when alone does not fit that pattern, and it needs something other than more stimulation.

Key Insights (Takeaways)

• Human research defines boredom as the aversive experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity (Eastwood et al., 2012).

• Boredom is proposed to combine restlessness and drowsiness, so neither behavior alone indicates it (Burn, 2017).

• Mink in barren cages showed more interest in stimuli of all kinds, including aversive ones, which separates boredom from apathy and anhedonia (Meagher & Mason, 2012).

• The link between lying awake and boredom-like responses in mink did not hold up consistently, a warning against simple indicators (Polanco et al., 2021).

• In shelter dogs, waking inactivity was associated with expert ratings of boredom and depression; the depression hypothesis was not supported and the boredom reading remains tentative (Harvey et al., 2019).

• A large survey found a boredom-related pattern among dogs with problems when left alone, alongside frustration- and reactivity-related patterns (de Assis et al., 2020).

• No study has yet applied the full stimulus-interest test to dogs or measured boredom in family dogs at home.

• Before calling a dog bored, consider pain, fatigue, over-arousal, frustration and anxiety when left alone, because they call for different responses.

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