Human preferences of canine coat colour and length

• Main Author: McDowell, Kalita Erin
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Memorial University of Newfoundland 2017
• Subjects: Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://research.library.mun.ca/12837/; https://research.library.mun.ca/12837/1/thesis.pdf

The “Big Black Dog Syndrome (BBDS)” is a phenomenon often reported by animal shelter workers to describe the belief that dogs with light coloured coats are consistently preferred over dark and/or black coloured dogs (Leonard, 2011). Research based on shelter adoption records is equivocal, however, with some studies finding support for BBDS and others not. In the current study, neither the small pilot study in which participants rated dogs photographs on a set of six semantic differential adjectives (Chapter 2), nor the much larger main study, in which two groups of participants (online vs. on-campus) were forced to choose their “preferred” dog from sets of two photos presented to them simultaneously (i.e., photos of the same breed in a dark vs. light coat colour; Chapter 3) provided any support for a bias against dark-coloured dogs. Rather, the main study revealed that online participants, in particular, showed a dark coat preference for six of the eight “breed groups” created (Scenthound, Sighthound, Sporting, Terrier, Toy, and Working groups). Participants showed an overall preference for light coats in only one breed group (Primitive/Spitz) and no coat colour preference in the remaining group (Herding). Furthermore, there were not necessarily similar coat preferences shown for the individual breeds that comprised a breed group. These findings suggest that people’s preference for canine coat colour is complex and may involve breedspecific attributes; this is clearly incompatible with the existence of BBDS as a general phenomenon. Coat colour preference was influenced by participant location. For example, preferences of participants from Newfoundland and Labrador (NL), a province with two official provincial dogs that occur with black coats (the Labrador Retriever and Newfoundland dog) were compared to the rest of Canadian participants’ preferences. Dark coat preferences emerged for the Newfoundland dog, in that NL participants selected a greater proportion of black Newfoundland dogs than participants from ...