Companion Animal Psychology

A study of over 16,000 adoptable dogs finds black dogs don’t take longer to be adopted after all. Photo: Istvan Csak/Shutterstock By Zazie Todd, PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. Understanding what people look for in adoptable dogs can make a big difference to animal shelters. It makes sense to target promotions in order to stop dogs having lengthy stays. But you can only do this if you know what people want.  The idea that black dogs wait longer for a new home than dogs of other colours has been around for a while. New research by Heather Svoboda and Christy Hoffman (Canisius College) suggests it does not exist, at least at the two shelters they surveyed. Christy Hoffman told me, “ We did not find evidence of Black Dog Syndrome, but we did find that shelter outcomes tended to be worse for brindle dogs and, not surprisingly, bully breeds. A relatively recent paper by Brown et al. (

Recently readers were invited to send in photos of their happy dogs with the #makeyourdoghappy hashtag. These are my favourites. It was very hard to choose - thank you to everyone who sent photos and gave me permission to share them. By Zazie Todd, PhD Erin Beckett says “Radar LOVES force free training. He gets so excited for our training sessions.” @Misa212 sent in this gorgeous photo of Trigger and her clicker. Helen Verte says, "Dudley's only been trained force free and he's always ready to offer a behavior for something delish. Besides food, and chase-me games, belly rubs make him incredibly happy and content!" Gill Land says “ Daks loves everyone and everything and knows how to have fun. ” Shelly Fourie says of Sasha, "My 3 year old Jack Russell waiting for her next treat." William Henderson says, "Colin is a happy boy." @5_pups sent in this wonderful photo o