Temperament Assessment

Assessing temperament is pivotal to our project.

Behavioral traits are not often considered deeply or objectively enough in breeding decisions. A dog’s temperament is a critical factor in how well it copes with the environment and relates to people.

We feel that temperament is just as important as health, when selecting a breeding match. The same strategy of gathering data on the entire family applies to temperament as with health screening.

Temperament is often a subjective and difficult thing to assess, but these are some methods that we find helpful to gaining an accurate picture of a dog’s character. It is recommended to perform these tests on adult dogs and that owners strive to be as honest as possible when self-reporting.

Owner completed questionnaires:

• CBARQ

• The Behavior Checklist (BCL)

In-person test for soundness that is judged:

• ATTS (American Temperament Test Society)

Video

An invaluable tool for demonstrating / assessing temperament is to take video of your dog in different situations. Words can only express so much. Video is a great way to illustrate for other people and get more unbiased feedback on dog body language.

The aim of this project is to gather data on as many members of the family as possible, even the dogs who are not going to be bred. Our plan is to assist owners in data collection efforts to make the process easier. Want to learn more about why having data on all of the family is so important? Please see our Why Collect Data? page.