Most dog owners think their own dogs are better trained than the average dog. Dogs who had been socialised as puppies are easier to train as they grow up. These two interesting findings were revealed by a new survey conducted by UK based online pet retailer Pet365. The UK retailer surveyed 1,000 pet owners to get their figures.
The survey asked 10 questions about dog training and dog behaviour of both dog owners and non-owners. Pet owners basically ignore their bad behaviour of their own dogs while accentuating the same in others:
The survey asked dog owners to rate how well trained their dogs are on a scale of 1 to 10. Later in the survey, they were asked how well trained the average dog is.
In response to the first question, 51.9% of dog owners rated their dogs a 7 or 8 on the behaviour scale. An additional 15.4% gave their dogs a 9 or 10 rating. By contrast, only 16.1% of dog owners gave their dogs a rating of 4 or 5 on the scale, with a paltry 3.9% rating their pets’ training a 1 or 2.
By contrast, when asked how well-trained the average dog is, 46.2% rated the training of other people’s dogs at 4 or 5 out of a possible 10, while only 23.1% gave the average pup a more generous 7 or 8 rating.
Pet365 asked dog owners if they had attended puppy socialisation classes with their pets when the dogs were puppies. Later in the survey, they were asked to rate the difficulty of training their dog on a scale of 1 to 10.
Only 34% of overall dog owners had attended puppy socialization classes but, among people who owned 3 dogs or more, that percentage shot up to 50.6% – proof that pet owners learn from their mistakes.
When asked to rate the ease of training their dog on a scale of 1 to 10 – with 10 being the easiest – pet owners who had not attended puppy socialisation classes were nearly twice as likely to rate their dogs at the difficult end of the scale, with 9.6% giving their dogs a rating of 3 or lower. By contrast, only 4.5% of dog owners who had socialised their puppies rated the ease of training their dogs at 3 or lower.
When it comes to actual training, a whopping 94% of dog owners spend at least some time working with their dogs at home, with greater than 55% spending an hour or more weekly in training time with their dogs. An impressive 90% of all dogs will sit on command and an equally impressive 83% will stay when told and recall (come) when called.
