While it’s true that there’s a great degree of variation across each individual dog, numerous studies have shown that there is a statistically significant relationship between a dog’s breed and its behavior on average. The amount of variability within a breed is captured by that breed’s standard deviation for that value.
In all the datasets, I excluded dogs listed as mixed breeds. Don’t take this the wrong way–I love mixed breeds! I even started a nonprofit to rescue shelter animals, most of which are mixed. Currently, the academic studies I found only measure the behavior of purebred dogs.
I use one year’s worth of data within the range 2015-2018. The reason for this is that New York stopped releasing breed information in 2015. In order to ensure data integrity for Seattle, I needed to use a different year. (Some years appeared to have very little information.)
Studies have shown that there are some differences in the test results of dogs from different countries; this might reflect breeding in that country or cultural differences in reporting the data. As I address separately, I used two breed attribute datasets for this study–one by Turcsán, et al. and one by Coren–and the results are generally consistent between the studies. At the time of writing, I only have permission to publish the detailed results related to the Turcsán study on my website.
Results
For overall averages, see below:
| Trainable | Bold | Calm | Sociable | |
| New York | 0.465406 | 0.581038 | 0.446582 | 0.453863 |
| Seattle | 0.597293 | 0.598161 | 0.551882 | 0.577961 |
| Edmonton | 0.576334 | 0.584502 | 0.523324 | 0.522898 |
| Adelaide | 0.522014 | 0.52114 | 0.414464 | 0.411995 |
NYC Mean Trainable 0.47 Bold 0.58 Calm 0.45 Sociable 0.45 NYC Standard Deviation Trainable 0.38 Bold 0.46 Calm 0.50 Sociable 0.43
Seattle Mean Trainable 0.60 Bold 0.60 Calm 0.55 Sociable 0.58 Seattle Standard Deviation Trainable 0.38 Bold 0.46 Calm 0.50 Sociable 0.43
Adelaide Mean Trainable 0.52 Bold 0.52 Calm 0.41 Sociable 0.41 Adelaide Standard Deviation Trainable 0.38 Bold 0.46 Calm 0.50 Sociable 0.43
Edmonton Mean Trainable 0.58 Bold 0.58 Calm 0.52 Sociable 0.52 Edmonton Standard Deviation Trainable 0.38 Bold 0.46 Calm 0.50 Sociable 0.43
I also tabulated the top breeds by borough, as follows:
Top NYC Dogs Count Yorkshire Terrier 7412 Shih Tzu 6835 Chihuahua 5555 Maltese 4117 Labrador Retriever 4055 Top Dogs By Borough Bronx Yorkshire Terrier 1171 Shih Tzu 1046 Chihuahua 830 American Staffordshire Terrier 689 Pit Bull Mix 513 Brooklyn Yorkshire Terrier 1923 Shih Tzu 1838 Chihuahua 1456 Pit Bull Mix 1033 Labrador Retriever 929 Manhattan Yorkshire Terrier 2017 Chihuahua 1871 Shih Tzu 1768 Labrador Retriever 1618 Maltese 1174 Queens Yorkshire Terrier 1607 Shih Tzu 1496 Maltese 1129 Chihuahua 1057 Labrador Retriever 711 Staten Island Yorkshire Terrier 694 Shih Tzu 687 Labrador Retriever 551 Maltese 378 Pit Bull Mix 355
I performed a Tukey test to determine if the average values in each borough were statistically different at the 0.05 level. Results are below. (The “true” in the right hand column indicates a rejection of the null hypothesis that they are the same.) In most cases, the differences in the means, though often small, were statistically significant.
Attribute: Trainable Multiple Comparison of Means - Tukey HSD,FWER=0.05 ======================================================= group1 group2 meandiff lower upper reject ------------------------------------------------------- Bronx Brooklyn 0.0474 0.032 0.0628 True Bronx Manhattan 0.0635 0.0488 0.0782 True Bronx Queens 0.023 0.0071 0.0388 True Bronx Staten Island 0.0532 0.0342 0.0723 True Brooklyn Manhattan 0.0161 0.0047 0.0274 True Brooklyn Queens -0.0245 -0.0373 -0.0116 True Brooklyn Staten Island 0.0058 -0.0109 0.0225 False Manhattan Queens -0.0405 -0.0525 -0.0286 True Manhattan Staten Island -0.0103 -0.0263 0.0057 False Queens Staten Island 0.0303 0.0132 0.0474 True ------------------------------------------------------- Attribute: Bold Multiple Comparison of Means - Tukey HSD,FWER=0.05 ======================================================= group1 group2 meandiff lower upper reject ------------------------------------------------------- Bronx Brooklyn 0.0206 0.0039 0.0374 True Bronx Manhattan 0.067 0.0511 0.083 True Bronx Queens 0.0419 0.0247 0.0591 True Bronx Staten Island 0.0632 0.0425 0.0839 True Brooklyn Manhattan 0.0464 0.0341 0.0587 True Brooklyn Queens 0.0213 0.0073 0.0352 True Brooklyn Staten Island 0.0426 0.0244 0.0607 True Manhattan Queens -0.0251 -0.0381 -0.0121 True Manhattan Staten Island -0.0039 -0.0212 0.0135 False Queens Staten Island 0.0213 0.0027 0.0398 True ------------------------------------------------------- Attribute: Calm Multiple Comparison of Means - Tukey HSD,FWER=0.05 ======================================================= group1 group2 meandiff lower upper reject ------------------------------------------------------- Bronx Brooklyn 0.0594 0.0391 0.0796 True Bronx Manhattan 0.1315 0.1122 0.1508 True Bronx Queens 0.0769 0.056 0.0977 True Bronx Staten Island 0.1214 0.0962 0.1465 True Brooklyn Manhattan 0.0721 0.0572 0.0871 True Brooklyn Queens 0.0175 0.0006 0.0344 True Brooklyn Staten Island 0.062 0.0401 0.0839 True Manhattan Queens -0.0547 -0.0704 -0.0389 True Manhattan Staten Island -0.0102 -0.0312 0.0109 False Queens Staten Island 0.0445 0.022 0.067 True ------------------------------------------------------- Attribute: Sociable Multiple Comparison of Means - Tukey HSD,FWER=0.05 ======================================================= group1 group2 meandiff lower upper reject ------------------------------------------------------- Bronx Brooklyn 0.0652 0.0454 0.0849 True Bronx Manhattan 0.1418 0.123 0.1607 True Bronx Queens 0.0828 0.0624 0.1031 True Bronx Staten Island 0.1216 0.0971 0.1462 True Brooklyn Manhattan 0.0767 0.0621 0.0912 True Brooklyn Queens 0.0176 0.0011 0.0341 True Brooklyn Staten Island 0.0565 0.0351 0.0779 True Manhattan Queens -0.0591 -0.0744 -0.0437 True Manhattan Staten Island -0.0202 -0.0407 0.0004 False Queens Staten Island 0.0389 0.0169 0.0608 True -------------------------------------------------------
I also performed a Tukey test between different cities. The results are as follows:
Attribute: Trainable Multiple Comparison of Means - Tukey HSD,FWER=0.05 ================================================= group1 group2 meandiff lower upper reject ------------------------------------------------- Adelaide Edmonton 0.0543 0.0438 0.0648 True Adelaide New York -0.0566 -0.0668 -0.0464 True Adelaide Seattle 0.0753 0.0627 0.0878 True Edmonton New York -0.1109 -0.117 -0.1049 True Edmonton Seattle 0.021 0.0115 0.0305 True New York Seattle 0.1319 0.1227 0.141 True ------------------------------------------------- Attribute: Bold Multiple Comparison of Means - Tukey HSD,FWER=0.05 ================================================ group1 group2 meandiff lower upper reject ------------------------------------------------ Adelaide Edmonton 0.0634 0.0508 0.0759 True Adelaide New York 0.0599 0.0478 0.072 True Adelaide Seattle 0.077 0.0621 0.0919 True Edmonton New York -0.0035 -0.0107 0.0038 False Edmonton Seattle 0.0137 0.0024 0.0249 True New York Seattle 0.0171 0.0063 0.028 True ------------------------------------------------ Attribute: Calm Multiple Comparison of Means - Tukey HSD,FWER=0.05 ================================================= group1 group2 meandiff lower upper reject ------------------------------------------------- Adelaide Edmonton 0.1089 0.0944 0.1233 True Adelaide New York 0.0321 0.0181 0.0461 True Adelaide Seattle 0.1374 0.1202 0.1547 True Edmonton New York -0.0767 -0.0851 -0.0684 True Edmonton Seattle 0.0286 0.0155 0.0416 True New York Seattle 0.1053 0.0927 0.1179 True ------------------------------------------------- Attribute: Sociable Multiple Comparison of Means - Tukey HSD,FWER=0.05 ================================================= group1 group2 meandiff lower upper reject ------------------------------------------------- Adelaide Edmonton 0.1109 0.0968 0.125 True Adelaide New York 0.0419 0.0282 0.0556 True Adelaide Seattle 0.166 0.1491 0.1828 True Edmonton New York -0.069 -0.0772 -0.0609 True Edmonton Seattle 0.0551 0.0423 0.0678 True New York Seattle 0.1241 0.1118 0.1364 True -------------------------------------------------
Future work
There’s much more to explore. I am checking on obtaining a dataset based on thousands of dogs from Sweden, and Dr. James Serpell at the University of Pennsylvania also has a great study.
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At the time the study was conducted, New York and Seattle were the only known American cities that published this data. However, nearly every major city in the US collects this data, so perhaps I can expand the study to other cities. It’s even possible that I can obtain data from other cities around the world.
OK, now I need lots of merchandise. Do you offer that?
If you enjoyed this study, I’d love it if you could support Doggy Data Zone by visiting the shop! A portion of the proceeds go to animal rescue.
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