Play Improves Your Relationship With Your Dog, Study Shows
Spending just 5 minutes a day on games that involve social interaction, such as tug or rough-and-tumble play, is good for the human-animal bond.
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| Photo: PeopleImages/Shutterstock |
You might like to make more time for fun with your canine best friend, because new research finds that playing games with your dog for an extra 5 minutes a day is good for your relationship with them.
And before you say, Duh, of course joint activities improve your relationship, the study found that training doesn’t have the same effect.
Importantly, fetch wasn’t included as one of the games that people played in the study, which is published in Royal Society Open Science. Instead, the scientists focussed on play that revolves around social interaction, like rough-and-tumble play, games of tug, chase, hide-and-seek, peek-a-boo, and “teasing” fingers that crawl towards the dog or a toy.
As well, you should keep at your new play routine, because these results happened over a 4 week period.
And while this looks at things from the human’s point of view, there is a suggestion that the relationship was also better from the dog’s perspective, because people reported that their dog seemed to see them more positively and suggested play more often.
The study of the effects of human-dog play
Compared to other activities like training, the scientists thought that play would have the biggest positive impact on the human-dog relationship.
Almost 3,000 dog guardians completed a survey about how often they played with and trained their dog. They also completed a standard questionnaire called the Monash Dog-Owner Relationship Survey (MDORS) which assesses their relationship is with their dog.
A subset of these people agreed to take part in a 4-week study in which they were assigned to either a Play condition, a Train condition, or a control (in which they were not asked to change anything about how they interacted with their dog).
Each week, participants completed a survey that checked if they were following the study’s instructions. After the 4 weeks was up, they filled out the MDORS again.
People in the Play condition were given a list of 13 different play activities and asked to spend an additional 5 minutes a day playing with their dog. They could choose which of the play activities to do. They were asked to vary the play, and to pay attention to what their dog seemed to prefer on a particular day.
People in the Train condition were asked to spend 5 minutes a day training their dog using food or treats as positive reinforcement. They were specifically asked to use food rewards so that it remained a different activity from the Play condition. The training changed each week, starting with a hand target, then teaching the dog to stay on a towel or blanket, then an emergency U-turn. In the final week, they got to choose one of these activities to repeat.
In both of the experimental conditions people were given detailed instructions, including to make sure that their attention was on the dog for the 5 minutes of the activity.
The results of play and training on the human-dog relationship
Amongst the larger group at the start of the study, people who played with or trained their dog more often had better scores on the MDORS. This applied across all 3 sub-scales: higher scores for Interaction and Emotional Closeness, and lower scores for the perceived costs of dog ownership.
There were also some interesting breed effects, People with Herding dogs were more likely to engage in human-dog play and more likely to engage in training than people with most other breeds. This is probably a good thing because Herding dogs have been bred to be very clever and active.
The scientists looked at the effects of the 4-week play or training program by comparing the final scores on the MDORS to those from the beginning of the study. They only looked at people who had followed the instructions for at least 8 days during the study period. Those who had played with their dog had higher scores for Emotional Closeness than those who had trained their dog. (The difference with the control group was not statistically significant).
Interestingly, 80% of participants in both the Play and Train groups said that they had noticed a positive change from taking part in the study, compared to 20% of those in the control group.
The design of the study on play and training
This is an interesting design, because the first part of the study gives a correlational result, while the second part is experimental and looks to assess causation.
Participants were also given the chance to reflect on their participation in the study. In the Play group, people most often wrote that their relationship with their dog had improved; in the Train group, people most often wrote that they were happy with the training results; and in the Control group, people said it had given them the opportunity to reflect on their relationship. People in the Play and Train condition also reported perceived benefits for their dog.
As for the different activities in the Play condition, tug was the favourite, followed by rough-and-tumble play, and chase. The scientists don’t seem to have asked which training activity was preferred.
One question I have is whether the training activities were maybe not as much fun as the play sessions. The specific behaviors chosen are more utilitarian in that they are closer to ‘obedience’ style activities. This begs the question of whether tricks training or scent training (or some other kind of training that is clearly ‘fun’ rather than practical) may have made a difference.
Another difference between the conditions is the extent to which participants were given a choice, as people in the Train condition only got a choice of activity when it came to the final week. As well, although people in the Train condition had to pay attention to where their dog was at in the training plan, people in the Play condition were encouraged to pay attention to what their dog wanted, which is slightly different.
Nonetheless, it is not surprising to learn that play is good for the human-dog relationship. The finding that just 5 minutes of extra play time a day can improve your relationship with your dog has practical applications and is very achievable.
The scientists also raise an interesting question to ponder: whether play played a role in the domestication of dogs. The fact that adult dogs continue to play with people is really quite special.
What are your favourite play activities to engage in with your dog?
Reference
P. Jensen, Caisa Persson-Werme, Lina S. V. Roth; Play interactions improve the dog–owner relationship. R Soc Open Sci. 1 April 2026; 13 (4): 252294. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.252294
