Social referencing: Water rescue trained dogs are less affected than pet dogs by the stranger’s message

Recent studies provide evidence of social referencing in dog–human interactions indicating that dogs use the emotional information provided by a human informant about a novel object/stimulus to guide their own behaviour towards it. Water rescue training is a type of educational activity aimed at creating human–dog dyads specialized in rescuing people who are drowning. A central aspect of the training programme is to strengthen the dogowner bond whilst at the same time engendering in dogs a strong positive attitude towards strangers. In this study 11 water rescue dogs with the SICS Water Rescue Certificate® (Water rescue trained group) were tested and compared with 11 pet dogs (Pet group) of the same breed in a Social referencing paradigm, to assess the potential influence of the specific training received by water rescue dogs on referential looking and behavioural regulation with a stranger acting as the informant. Almost all pet and water rescue trained dogs showed referential looking towards the stranger, however only pet dogs approached the object more, following the stranger’s positive emotional message (p = 0.03). Results provide further evidence that Social Referencing occurs in dogs even when the human informant is an unfamiliar person. Furthermore, they suggest that the specific training experience of water rescue trained dogs affected their reaction to the stranger’s message, reducing their inclination to follow it when compared to pet dogs.