Is Your Dog Ready to Shine?

Behavior Is Your Dog Ready to Shine? Oct 24, 2025 By Courtney Sexton The term “pandemic puppy” has been thrown around a lot during the last few years, and is heavily loaded with largely negative connotations about underprepared and overeager animal adopters and dogs with socialization issues and lasting behavioral challenges. While I understand the spread of a catchy, alliterative moniker as an attempt to process the complex phenomenon that was living with a dog during COVID-19 shutdowns, the term is a gross oversimplification and generalization of a whole generation of dogs. Maybe I’m sensitive to the implied judgement against this cohort of dogs because I’m a Millennial (I’ll leave that to my therapist to help me unpack). Joking aside, my dog Sonder is what some would call a “pandemic pup” but to me, the only thing this means is that he was born sometime in April of 2020, and he came to live with me that July. Flashback to 2020 There’s been a lot of speculation – and now some emerging research – about how the many and profound changes that people and animals around the world experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted dogs, and in particular their behavior (1–3) . On one hand, we know that altered routines resulted in some dogs getting a lot more attention than they had been used to, which, depending on the pup, could have been either welcome or not. Other dogs ended up not being socialized in ways that they might otherwise have had the opportunity to be, or saw a reduction in the types and amount of activities and companions they were exposed to. While some humans faced difficulties caring for their pups during the pandemic, others had more time on their hands to spend with their canine companions, or to welcome new ones into their homes. Indeed, it was during the shutdown that many people and pups began their button learning journeys! What we don’t really know however, is how (or if) pandemic life has continued to influence dogs’ everyday experiences. Deep dive: Analyzing behavior in more than 45,000 dogs during the pandemic As a researcher, a lot of my investigations involve collaborations with other scientists working on the Dog Aging Project , or the DAP. The DAP is a large-scale, longitudinal study of dogs living all across the United States, which aims to better understand what contributes to dog health, aging, and wellbeing. Today, there are more than 50,000 dogs enrolled in the project! Recently, some of my colleagues and I set out to establish a behavioral baseline for our canine participants— that is, we wanted to know, what were the o

verall behavioral profiles, on average, of dogs entering the study each year in terms of characteristics like excitability, fear, energy, aggression, and more. While conducting our analyses, we realized that because the DAP started collecting data in 2019, we also had the opportunity to look to see if there were any trends or interesting changes in dogs’ behavioral profiles during the COVID-19 years. So what did we learn in our study ? In looking at average behaviors for dogs enrolled in the Dog Aging Project from 2020-2023, we found that across four behavior categories — Fear, Attention-Seeking, Aggression, and Trainability — there were differences from year-to-year, but not necessarily trends in one direction or another (4) . Interestingly, however, owners reporting dog behavior in 2020 said their dogs were on average more responsive to training and learning than they reported in each year thereafter. In other words, dogs were reportedly better at engaging in learning before or at the beginning of “shutdown” than they were deeper into COVID-19 living. We also found, unsurprisingly, that factors like life stage, sex, size, and breed makeup all influenced dogs’ behavior in different ways. That’s because, as with many animals — people included! — the whole of a dogs’ experiences, environment, and genetics come together to shape how they respond to different situations in their everyday life. What does this mean for the dogs? Our data don't necessarily show that “pandemic puppies” were harder to train or less ready and able to learn, but rather, that owners reported dogs across all life stages being less trainable during those years. With all of the different disruptions to people's home life and routines, this could have been because owners were approaching training and learning differently, there were new dogs in new environments, dogs were struggling to adjust, or any of the above. Also, while 2023 “Trainability” averages were still reportedly lower than in 2020, of all the years, there was the smallest difference between 2020 and 2023 averages, which suggests perhaps dogs were becoming more trainable again as the pandemic ended, or at least that people were perceiving them to be so. At the end of the day, we can’t truly know if it was the humans or the dogs who were struggling more in this particular domain of behavior. Looking to the future Beyond focusing on the “pandemic factor”, from a research standpoint, it is really exciting to establish this data for this large population of dogs because now we can see how reporting of these average behavioral

ariability in 47,444 dogs entering the Dog Aging Project from 2020 to 2023. PLoS One. 2025 Sep 10;20(9):e0330257. Share Share Reading next So you think you know your dog? Oct 16, 2025 Courtney Sexton Meet Meg and Ruby: She’s Learning to “Talk” and I’m Learning to Listen Nov 13, 2025 Calvin Docking Leave a comment This site is protected by hCaptcha and the hCaptcha Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Name Email Message Submit