Conflict and Reconciliation in Dogs: How Dogs Resolve Disputes
After a squabble between two dogs, many owners expect a gesture of peace: a lick, a nudge, a shared walk back to the sofa. The idea that dogs make up after a fight, just as wolves…
unterHUNDs Research
Behavior problems
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.
Mounting Behavior in Dogs: Sex, Play, Arousal or Conflict?
A dog mounting another dog, a cushion or a visitor's leg is usually read in one of two ways: as sexual behavior or as a bid for dominance. The research supports neither shortcut on…
Territorial Behavior in Dogs: Do Dogs Defend a Territory?
A dog that barks at the fence when someone walks past is usually described as territorial, and the word suggests a wolf guarding the borders of its land. The research draws a sharp…
Owner Effects: How Owner Personality and Attachment Relate to Dog Behavior
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…
Behavioral Assessment in Dogs: From Description to Plan
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 in Dogs: What the Evidence Supports
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…
Compulsive Behavior in Dogs: Stereotypies, Tail Chasing and the Evidence
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…
Predatory Behavior in Dogs: Sequence, Selection and Learning
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…
Conflict Between Dogs in the Same Household: What the Evidence Shows
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…
Aggression in Dogs: Function, Warning Signals and Bite Risk
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…
Attention-Seeking and Demand Behavior in Dogs: What Holds Up
"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…
ADHD-Like Traits in Dogs: Attention, Impulsivity, Learning, and Self-Control
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…
Exercise and Dog Behavior: Does Tiring a Dog Out Make It Calmer?
"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…
Why Dominance Fails as a Scientific Concept in Dogs
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.…
Resource Guarding in Dogs: Definition, Prediction, Assessment and Treatment
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…
Self-Control in Dogs: The Role of the Frontal Cortex, Stress, and Training
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…
Testosterone and Aggression in Dogs - Separating Facts from Myths
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…
Dog Bites and Children: What the Risk Data Show and What Prevention Achieves
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…
House Soiling in Dogs: Medical, Behavioral, and How to Tell Them Apart
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.
Reactivity Is Not Aggression: The Neuroscience of the Lunging Dog
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…
Coprophagia in Dogs: What One Large Survey Found and What the Parasitology Says
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.