Aggressive behavior of purebred dogs which influences

Aggressive behavior is an unwanted and serious problem in pet dogs, negatively influencing canine welfare, management, and public acceptance. Our objective was to identify demographic and environmental factors associated with aggressive behavior toward people in Finnish purebred pet dogs. We collected behavioral data from 13,715 dogs with an online questionnaire completed by the owner. Here we used a dataset of 9,270 dogs that included 1,791 dogs with frequent aggressive behavior toward people and 7,479 dogs without aggressive behavior toward people. We studied the effect of several explanatory variables on aggressive behavior with multiple logistic regression. Several factors increased the probability of aggressive behavior toward people: older age, being male, fear, small body size, lack of companion of the same species, and being the owner's first dog. The likelihood of aggressive behavior also differed between breeds. These results replicate previous studies and suggest that improvements in owner education and breeding practices may alleviate aggressive behavior toward people, while genetic studies may reveal associated hereditary factors.