unterHUNDs Research
Labels explain little. These reviews look at what the behavior achieves, which factors raise risk, and why two dogs doing the same thing on a lead may want opposite outcomes. Included are the claims that persist without evidence.
Looking for practical help with your own dog? Our guides for dog owners put this research into plain, everyday steps.
These articles are written in English and aimed at trainers, behavior consultants and veterinary professionals. Deutschsprachige Beiträge findest du im Hunderatgeber.
Anxious owner, anxious dog: the idea is popular, and it often arrives as a reproach. The research behind it is real but narrower than the slogan. Most studies are cross-sectional s…
A behavior assessment has to answer four questions in order: what exactly does the dog do, in which situations, what factors may maintain it, and what else could explain it. Most d…
Cooperative care — teaching a dog to take part voluntarily in husbandry and veterinary procedures instead of being restrained through them — answers a well-documented problem. In o…
Tail chasing, spinning, shadow hunting, flank sucking, licking a leg raw: these behaviors are described in dogs as stereotypies, as abnormal repetitive behavior and as compulsive d…
A dog sees a rabbit and is gone. The owner reports that "the prey drive took over", and the phrase carries an explanation with it: something built up, reached a limit, and discharg…
Dogs living in the same home share limited space, repeated routines and access to resources that may become contested. In a UK owner survey, 8 percent of respondents reported aggre…
A dog bites a visitor in the hallway. The owner says it came out of nowhere, that the dog has never done anything like it, that he is not an aggressive dog. All three statements ar…
"My dog is demanding" is an attribution, not a behavioral diagnosis. What can be measured is what the dog does, the situation in which it happens, and what follows. That distinctio…
Some dogs cannot stay with a task for thirty seconds. Some cannot settle in a room where nothing is happening. Some cannot wait, ever, for anything. Owners describe all three as "h…
"A tired dog is a good dog" is one of the most repeated pieces of dog advice. Large surveys do link activity, training and exercise with several behavioral outcomes — but those are…
The idea that dogs continually test humans for rank, and that owners must physically assert authority to keep order, has outlasted the evidence that produced it by several decades.…
A dog stiffens over a chew, eats faster when someone walks past its bowl, or picks up a stolen sock and carries it to another room. None of these involves a growl, and each is reso…
Most owners read impulsive behavior as a training gap. A dog lunges at another dog, bolts after a squirrel, or cannot settle in an exciting place, and the conclusion is that the do…
For decades, testosterone has been cast as the primary driver of canine aggression — a hormonal switch that, once flipped, turns a calm dog dangerous. This narrative has fueled cou…
Children are among the age groups most often hospitalized for dog bites, and their rate has not risen. What the evidence says about the dog, the trigger, the warning, and preventio…
Urine or feces indoors is an endpoint of a dozen different causes. How to describe the behavior so the description narrows the field, and what the evidence says for each category.
Two dogs bark and lunge at the end of the lead when another dog appears fifty meters away. In one, the behavior functions to make the other dog go away. In the other, it is directe…
Sixteen percent of dogs eat feces frequently, the large survey found no association with reported diet, and nothing has been shown to stop it reliably. Where the standard explanati…
For dog owners: the unterHUNDs guides cover behavior, training, health and everyday life in practical terms, with the same sources behind them.