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It has often been suggested that intraspecific dominance relationships are established through play. By analogy, it is also claimed that the outcome of competitive games can affect dog-human relationships. This paper experimentally tests the latter idea. Fourteen Golden Retrievers were each subjected to two treatments; 20 sessions of a tug-of-war game with the experimenter which they were allowed to win, and 20 sessions which they lost. Their relationship with the experimenter was assessed, via a composite behavioural test, once at the outset and once after each treatment. Principal components analysis allowed the 52 behavioural measures to be combined into nine underlying factors. Confidence (the factor most closely corresponding to conventional dominance) was unaffected by the treatments. Dogs scored higher for obedient attentiveness after play treatments, irrespective of whether they won or lost, and demandingness scores increased with familiarity of the test person. The 10 most playful dogs scored significantly higher for playful attention seeking after winning than after losing. We conclude that, in this population, dominance dimensions of the dog-human relationship are unaffected by the outcome of repetitive tug-of-war games. However, we suggest that the effects of games may be modified by the presence of play signals, and when these signals are absent or misinterpreted the outcome of games may have more serious consequences. Games may also assume greater significance for a minority of "potentially dominant" dogs.

Analysis. --- Attention. --- Behavioural test. --- Consequences. --- Dimension. --- Dimensions. --- Dog. --- Dogs. --- Dominance relationships. --- Dominance. --- Paper. --- Play. --- Population. --- Seeking. --- Test. --- Tests. --- Treatment.

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Historically, pet dogs were trained using mainly negative reinforcement or punishment but positive reinforcement using rewards has recently become more popular. The methods used may have different impacts on the dogs' welfare. We distributed a questionnaire to 364 dog owners in order to examine the relative effectiveness of different training methods and their effects upon a pet dog's behaviour. When asked how they trained their dog on seven basic tasks, 66% reported using vocal punishment 12% used physical punishment 60% praise (social reward), 51% food rewards and 11% play. The owner's ratings for their dog's obedience during eight tasks correlated positively with the number of tasks which they trained using rewards (P < 0.01), but not using punishment (P = 0.5). When asked whether their dog exhibited any of 16 common problematic behaviours, the number of problems reported by the owners correlated with the number of tasks for which their dog was trained using punishment (P < 0.001), but not using rewards (P = 0.17). Exhibition of problematic behaviours may be indicative of compromised welfare, because such behaviours can be caused by - or result in - a state of anxiety and may lead to a dog being relinquished or abandoned. Because punishment was associated with an increased incidence of problematic behaviours, we conclude that it may represent a welfare concern without concurrent benefits in obedience. We suggest that positive training methods may be more useful to the pet-owning community

Animal welfare. --- Anxiety. --- Behaviour. --- Dog. --- Dogs. --- Domestic dog. --- Enrichment. --- Food. --- Human-animal interaction. --- Interaction. --- Method. --- Obedience. --- Old. --- Pet dogs. --- Pet. --- Physical. --- Play. --- Problematic behaviour. --- Punishment. --- Questionnaire. --- Ratings. --- Reinforcement. --- Reward. --- Social. --- Stress. --- Task. --- Tasks. --- Time. --- Training methods. --- Training. --- Welfare.

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In the popular literature, it is often assumed that a single conceptual framework can be applied to both dog–dog and dog–human interactions, including play. We have, through three studies, tested the hypothesis that dog–dog and dog–human play are motivationally distinct. In an observational study of dogs being walked by their owners (N=402), dogs which were walked together, and had opportunities to play with one another, played with their owners with the same frequency as dogs being walked alone. This finding was supported by a questionnaire survey of 2585 dog owners in which dogs in multi-dog households played slightly more often with their owners than dogs in single-dog households. The performance of dog–dog play does not, therefore, seem to suppress the dogs' motivation to play with their owners as would be predicted if they were motivationally interchangeable. In an experimental comparison of dog–dog and dog–human toy-centred play, the dogs were more likely to give up on a competition, to show and present the toy to their play partner, if that partner was human. When two toys were available, dogs playing with other dogs spent less time showing interest in both toys and possessed one of the toys for longer, than dogs playing with people. Overall, the dogs were more interactive and less likely to possess the object when playing with a person. We conclude that dog–dog and dog–human play are structurally different, supporting the idea that they are motivationally distinct. We therefore suggest there is no reason to assume that the consequences of dog–dog play can be extrapolated to play with humans.

Behaviour. --- Competition. --- Consequences. --- Dog. --- Dogs. --- Frequency. --- Human-animal relationship. --- Human. --- Humans. --- Interaction. --- Interactions. --- Motivation. --- Object. --- People. --- Performance. --- Play behaviour. --- Play. --- Questionnaire survey. --- Questionnaire. --- Survey. --- Time. --- Toy.