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Dog Guardian Interpretation of Familiar Dog Aggression Questions in the C-BARQ: Do We Need to Redefine “Familiar”?
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Cognitive and Behavioural Ecology Program, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL A1C 5S7, Canada
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East Coast Canine Dog Training, St John’s, NL A1E 3A5, Canada
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Department of Psychology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL A1B 3X9, Canada
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Animals 2025, 15(19), 2876; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani15192876
Submission received: 30 July 2025
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Revised: 22 September 2025
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Accepted: 27 September 2025
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Published: 30 September 2025
(This article belongs to the Section Companion Animals)
Simple Summary
The popular Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire (C-BARQ) contains a four-question subscale asking dog guardians to score their dog’s threatening behaviours towards another dog in the household, which generates a score for familiar dog aggression (FDA) or dog rivalry. In our C-BARQ scores from another study, we noticed a large number of participants who lived with only one dog (58.6%) completed these questions, giving their singleton dog an unexpected score. This could be a problem for understanding what these scores mean. We wondered if lifestyle factors might be related to guardians interpreting the meaning of “familiar dog” more broadly, so we sent them a follow-up questionnaire. Singleton dogs given an FDA score had proportionately more social activities with non-household dogs compared to singleton dogs with no score. We then reviewed the literature to see if other studies had similar findings for singleton dogs. We found that many studies did not report FDA scores for various reasons, and in those that did so, few provided information on the proportion of singleton dogs with FDA scores. We encourage researchers to consider ways to make the FDA scores more consistent and interpretable across studies so that we might better understand dog rivalry behaviour.
Abstract
The C-BARQ familiar dog aggression (FDA) subscale contains four items relating to threatening responses towards familiar dogs in the same household (i.e., dog rivalry). In a recent study, we noticed that 92 of 157 guardians who owned only one dog completed the FDA items, generating an unexpected score. We followed up with participants to explore whether lifestyle factors influenced their completion of the FDA items. Singleton dogs with FDA scores were more likely to regularly participate in social activities with other dogs, with many scores based on such interactions with non-household dogs. The singleton dogs with FDA scores also had marginally lower fear-related C-BARQ scores compared to singletons with no FDA score and dogs living in multi-dog households. We then conducted a scoping review of articles using English versions of the C-BARQ and found wide variation in whether or not FDA scores were reported. Studies that reported significant FDA findings often did not indicate the proportion of scores in their data that came from singleton dogs, raising issues of accuracy and interpretation of the subscale. We discuss ways to clarify the interpretation of the FDA questions by dog guardians and hope to promote further consideration of practices to improve replicability across studies.
Keywords:
dog rivalry; canine behavior; FDA
