Plain-English summary
A dog's behaviour when left alone is the one part of its life its owner cannot witness. Owners infer it — from the neighbour's comment, from a chewed door frame, from the state of the dog on return.
This study checked how good those inferences are by comparing what owners reported on a standard behaviour questionnaire against video of what their dogs actually did after they left.
The answer was: partially right. Owner scores tracked the dogs' anxious behaviour to a moderate degree — and the agreement was strongest for behaviours that leave something behind to be found.
What the study found
Researchers compared owner responses to the separation-related behaviour section of the Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire with video footage of their dogs (n = 31). A focal animal continuous recording method described what each dog did during the first 25 minutes after the owner's departure. Some dogs were recorded in the presence of one or two other dogs; the rest were alone.
There was a significant moderate positive correlation between the separation-related behaviour questionnaire score and the percentage of time a dog spent exhibiting behaviours suggestive of anxiety (rs = 0.438; P = 0.003). A similar moderate correlation held against the first principal component score of the recorded behaviours (rs = 0.385; P = 0.008).
Correlations for individual behaviours were higher for the more apparent ones, such as destruction, than for subtler signs.
The authors' conclusion is deliberately hedged: the significant positive correlation suggests owners may have indicative knowledge of their dog's behaviour during their absence, but further work with more participants and repeated recordings is required.
What this study cannot tell you
Thirty-one dogs is a small sample, and each was recorded once. Dogs vary day to day, and a single session cannot separate a dog's usual pattern from how it happened to behave that afternoon with a camera newly in the room.
Twenty-five minutes is also a specific and short window. It is a reasonable choice — separation-related behaviour tends to appear early — but this study says nothing about what happens across a full working day.
A correlation of 0.438 is moderate. It means owner reports carry real signal and substantial error at the same time. It does not support "owners know", and it does not support "owners have no idea". Both readings would be misuses of the same number.
The presence of other dogs in some recordings adds a further source of variation the design was not powered to disentangle.
And the direction the finding runs matters: it shows questionnaire scores correlate with recorded behaviour in this sample. It does not establish that any individual owner's impression is reliable, nor identify which owners are the accurate ones.
What pet owners should track
The practical point is that this is a domain where recording genuinely adds something no amount of attentiveness can:
- What you come home to — damage, toileting, disturbed bedding, water bowl emptied — with the date and how long you were out
- Reports from neighbours about barking or howling, including the time
- How your dog behaves in the minutes before you leave, which you can observe directly
- How your dog greets you, and how long it takes to settle afterwards
- If you record video, note how long you were gone and whether anything was unusual about that departure
Take recordings and notes to a veterinarian or a qualified behaviourist. Separation-related behaviour overlaps with medical causes, including pain and cognitive decline in older dogs, and it is not something to self-diagnose from a video.
What PAWai can help organize
The evidence you have about your dog's time alone is fragmentary by nature — a chewed skirting board on Tuesday, a neighbour's remark on Friday. PAWai holds those fragments with their dates so a pattern can emerge from them. PAWai does not assess separation anxiety, does not analyse recordings, and does not distinguish distress from boredom or from a medical cause. This study needed continuous video coding to describe what dogs were doing; that interpretation belongs to a veterinarian or behaviourist. What PAWai contributes is that the fragments are still there, dated, when you sit down with one.
Disclaimer
PAWai organizes information and educates pet owners. PAWai does not diagnose conditions or recommend treatment. Always consult a licensed veterinarian for medical decisions about your pet.
Citation
van Rooy, D., Arnott, E. R., Thomson, P. C., McGreevy, P. D., & Wade, C. M. (2018). Using an owner-based questionnaire to phenotype dogs with separation-related distress: do owners know what their dogs do when they are absent? Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 23, 58–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2017.10.009