did not find any differences between purebred and mixed-breed dogs in three personality assessments. On the other hand, Ottenheimer-Carrier et al. found higher neuroticism, dog-directed fear and human-directed fear in mixed-breeds than in all AKC breed groups except the Toy dogs group. Mixed-breeds have also been reported to have an increased risk to develop noise phobia, they were more likely to be aggressive toward unfamiliar people, more fearful, and more sensitive to touch than purebreds. Hsu and Sun reported higher ranks for three aggression subscales in mixed breeds (towards strangers, towards dogs, and towards owner/s). For example, Bennett and Rholf reported mixed-breeds to be more disobedient, more nervous, more excitable, and exhibited excessive barking more frequently in the case of mixed-breeds than in purebred dogs. Several studies have detected behavioural differences between mixed-breeds and purebred dogs. Some studies have reported that adult mixed-breed dogs are less likely to suffer from inherited genetic diseases and live longer than purebreds. improved health and lower susceptibility to diseases), because they show a lower level of homozygosity and have much higher genetic variation, which could lead to hybrid vigour. Mixed-breeds are often assumed to have some phenotypic advantage over purebreds in terms of fitness (e.g. However, they probably represent the majority of dogs worldwide. The mixed-breeds’ contribution to the stray, feral and pariah dog populations is hard to estimate reliably. However, these proportions are likely to underestimate the real number of mixed-breeds in the whole dog population, considering that these data estimate only the “owned” dog population (based on pet industry reports, veterinary records, household panels or mail surveys, ). In scientific databases, mixed-breeds compose approximately one third of the dogs. In Germany and in the UK, approximately 31–33% of dogs are mixed-breeds, while in Australia, mixed-breeds make up half of the population of dogs living in human households. The percentage of mixed-breed dogs (out of all dogs living in households in the USA), is estimated to be around 53% by the American Veterinary Medical Association, and 44% by the American Pet Products Association. ‘designer dogs’), they could be offspring of a purebred and a mixed-breed dog, offspring of two mixed-breeds, or descendants of stray, feral or pariah dog populations. They could be intentionally bred by humans as hybrids of recognized breeds (e.g. Mixed-breed dogs comprise dogs of heterogeneous origin that by definition, belong to no recognized breed, and their ancestry is usually complex or unknown. ), studies about mixed-breed dogs are rare. Although the typical behaviour of different dog breeds has attracted considerable scientific attention (e.g. When it comes to selecting a new canine companion, choosing an incompatible breed could have dire consequences, regarding the well-being of both the owner and the dog. Our results suggest that instead of being the “average” dogs, mixed-breeds represent a special group with characteristic behavioural traits. We discuss that these differences at least partly might be due to selective forces. After controlling for the distribution of the demographic and dog keeping factors, we found that mixed-breeds were (1) more trainable than purebreds, (2) less calm, and (3) showed more problematic behaviour than purebreds (p < 0.001 for all). We found that according to their owners, mixed-breeds were (1) less calm, (2) less sociable toward other dogs, and (3) showed more problematic behaviour than purebreds (p 10%) differences: neutering was more frequent among mixed-breeds, and they were acquired at older ages than purebreds (p < 0.001 for both), which could result in the observed behaviour differences. Questionnaire data were collected on a large sample of dogs living in Germany (N = 7,700 purebred dogs representing more than 200 breeds, and N = 7,691 mixed-breeds). We have conducted two surveys to investigate the behavioural, demographic, and dog keeping differences between purebred and mixed-breed companion dogs. Studies about the behaviours of mixed-breed dogs are rare, although mixed-breeds represent the majority of the world’s dog population.
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