How People Treat Their Dogs All Over the World

Do you own a dog? I guess then you have a leash, a collar, a blanket, and a food bowl. Maybe you also have a harness, a brush and a second leash, and probably some toys lying around. Your dog sleeps in your house, you buy food for your best friend, and you go to the vet with him when he is sick. All owners who come to cognition tests in our institute with their dogs invest money and a similar effort, and even the ones that we visit in their backyard have at least a leash, a collar, a blanket and a food bowl.

But this is not the case for more than half of the dog population in the world. That does not mean that dogs in other cultures are not loved by their owners and that they are not treated as companions. We just do not know much about them. Our dog cognition research suffers from the same biases as general psychology: In both fields, studies are usually done in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies (Henrich et al. 2010). But how do people treat their dogs in non-Western countries? How are dogs used and how do people value them?

Source: Used With Permission

Non-WEIRD dogs

To answer these questions and better understand dog-human relationships outside of the Western world, we assessed data on the functions and treatment of dogs in 124 globally distributed societies. We used ethnographic data from the eHRAF cross-cultural database, which is a systematically organized collection of thousands of books and articles on cultures from all regions of the world. It provides information on particular cultures and ethnic groups, for example, their beliefs, superstitions, kinship units, and settlement patterns.

We looked specifically for information about dogs and we identified societies in which dogs serve any of these five main functions: hunting, defense, guarding herds, herding, and carrying or transporting supplies. We then collected data on how dogs are treated in those societies and coded it into three dimensions: positive care (e.g. dogs are allowed indoors, dogs receive healthcare, puppies are raised), negative treatment (e.g. dogs are not fed, dogs are physically abused, dogs are regularly culled), and personhood (e.g. dogs are named, dogs are mourned, dogs are perceived as family members). We found that across all societies, dogs’ functions are a good predictor of how they are treated by their owners (Chira et al. 2023).

For some reason, I had assumed that dogs only had one function in non-Western societies. But that is not the case. For example, in many societies dogs are used for both, hunting and guarding. It turns out that the more functions dogs have in a society, the closer the dog-human relationship is likely to be. Thus, there is more of what we called positive care and personhood and less negative treatment.

We also found that not all of a dog’s jobs influence treatment equally. For example, in societies where herding dogs are more prevalent, there is more positive care associated with them. We also discovered that there were more elements of personhood for dogs in hunting societies. Thus, where dogs are kept for hunting, humans are more likely to name them and perceive them as family members. Despite the data we have collected, we cannot accurately predict whether hunting dogs are treated like people, or whether there is more positive care for herding dogs. We can, however, say that for those societies where dogs have only one function. But in societies where there are multiple functions, the anthropologist who studied these cultures usually did not distinguish between the different kinds of dogs. As a result of this, there is currently no other way to know that than to visit these societies and find out.

Another interesting finding of our study was that negative treatment and positive care are not mutually exclusive. In 32 societies, positive care and negative treatment was present. For example, dogs were allowed indoors, but they were physically abused. Or puppies were raised, but also regularly culled. This suggests that the dog-human relationship is not as simple or straightforward as “man’s best friend,” but involves a complex balance between offering care and minimizing costs.

It is clear in the Western world that we use dogs for many functions, and we are prepared to invest a lot in them (see above). However, there are still many open questions about the unique dog-human relationship. For instance, why did some societies start employing dogs for multiple purposes? Did such use bring sizeable benefits? And if so, what were they? Why are some dogs more valued than others? By answering these questions, we will reveal new detail about how dogs and humans have affected each other throughout our shared history.