Therapy Paws

Overview

Objectives/Goals Our objective is to see if Therapy Dogs have a paw preference of left or right paws, because according to our research, right pawed dogs have higher success rates in training programs. Methods/Materials We used 10 therapy dogs, dog treats, a jar, and string. We ran 4 tests with 4 trials on each test. Test 1 was Shake: Putting out both our hands to see which paw the dog would shake with; Test 2 was Treat Trap: Put a treat in a jar to see which paw they would use to remove it; Test 3 was Walk Forward: Stood away from the dog and called "COME" and recorded which paw they stepped with first; Test 4 was Something on the Nose: Placed a string on the dog's nose to see which paw was used to remove it. Results The overall results for the 4 tests on 10 dogs showed: 50% were left pawed, 40% were right pawed, and 10% were ambilateral. Conclusions/Discussion Our data that we collected indicated that our hypothesis was wrong. We concluded that more therapy dogs are left pawed. Our data showed out of 10 dogs tested: 50% were left pawed, 40% were right pawed and 10% were ambilateral. To improve this experiment we could try different tests because some dogs are trained not to use their paws. We could also use other "helping" dogs such as Hearing Dogs and Guide Dogs.

Competition history

• CSEF 2015 Mammalian Biology · Entry J1217

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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