Whether it’s agility, scent work, or pulling a sledge, dog sports are an incredibly fun way to spend time with your dog. They provide your dog with mental stimulation and physical exercise, plus all that time spent working as a team strengthens your bond. But could there be an even longer-lasting advantage? Scientists think there might be.
It’s possible that dog sports done at any age could delay cognitive aging in later years. However, to explore how dog sports affect senior dogs, the research team needs a huge study sample. If you have a dog over the age of 7, whether you participated in dog sports or not, this is your chance to contribute to a discovery that could help dogs around the world stay happier and healthier in their older years.
Dog Sports Are Beneficial to Dogs’ Wellbeing
Dr. Péter Pongrácz, associate professor of the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University, and graduate student Petra Dobos, are leading the research, which is supported by a grant from the Morris Animal Foundation. According to Dr. Pongrácz, cognitive aging in dogs has been a popular topic of study over the last 10 years. But despite dog enthusiasts debating the benefits of dog sports, nobody has looked at the effect of a dog’s lifetime activity on aging.
Dr. Pongrácz and Dobos feel recreational dog sports can be beneficial for dogs because they improve their relationships with their owners. Plus, most sports involve a lot of training, which is great for dogs’ everyday well-being. Dog sports also get dogs moving, so they’re advantageous for physical health, at least as long as they’re not too heavy or intense.
The researchers are excited to see whether dog sports provide the additional benefit of slowing cognitive aging. Dobos says she expects they do because the various types of sports all give a dog’s brain a workout. “Sometimes the dog has to follow the instructions of the owner. That also needs some thinking. But there are some problem solver activities as well, or some training includes searching on their own, so we would expect that sport could extend the aging of dogs,” she explains.
Do Different Dog Sports Have Different Effects?
Dr. Pongrácz believes dogs who participate in dog sports may show less severe symptoms of cognitive aging. But all sports may not be created equal. He explains that there are different ways to stimulate a dog’s brain. It could be through social interaction, such as with the handler. Or it could be through the senses, like olfaction, hearing, or vision. Just attending an event can provide a lot of these types of stimulation. “We have a suspicion we cannot prove right now,” he says, “but hopefully after the study we can say something about which are the most beneficial sports. And whether it is important that the dog is doing something which is sort of closer to the original function of the dog, or if it doesn’t matter, just do something.”
The idea of matching your dog sport to your dog’s original purpose is a fascinating one. For example, would a Dachshund benefit more from Earthdog than obedience? Or a Siberian Husky from pulling a sledge versus participating in agility? Dr. Pongrácz and Dobos expect different sports to have different impacts on dogs, but they need to tease apart both breed and sport in their study. They also need to account for confounding variables like the size of the dog, whether they live indoors or outdoors, whether the dog is spayed or neutered, the dog’s physical health, and so on. That requires a massive sample size.
Dog Owners Needed for Citizen Science
To truly study how dog sports affect senior dogs, Dobos says they’re hoping for around 1,000 participants. From their point of view, the best way to recruit many dog owners is by conducting an online questionnaire. Finding participants virtually also allows the scientists to reach a wide range of owners around the world. The questionnaire is for any owner of a dog 7 years of age or older. Both purebred dogs and mixed breeds are welcome, and the dog doesn’t have to have done even a day of dog sports to participate.
The anonymous questionnaire only takes 15 minutes. Researchers also plan to keep all answers confidential and only use them for research purposes. Dobos and Dr. Pongrácz hope to reach their target number of participants in the next six or seven months and have final results available in about a year.
They’re also conducting in-person experiments to complement the questionnaire. They’ll be putting older dogs through a variety of experiments, such as memory tests, eye contact tests, and problem-solving tasks, to measure the actual effects of cognitive aging. Those results may take an additional year to complete.
The goal of the study is to provide dog owners with advice about how to best help their dogs minimize cognitive aging. It’s not about which sport is right or wrong. This questionnaire is a chance for dog owners or breeders to participate in a study that could eventually benefit dogs everywhere. Dr. Pongrácz hopes the research will “truly yield something that is useful for everyone around the world who wants healthier, happier dogs to live with until old age.”