Does Play After Training Improve a Canine Good Citizenship Skill in Pet Dogs?

A major reason people surrender their dogs or fail to adopt them from shelters is due to concerns regarding the management of behavioral issues. This makes effective training of everyday obedience behaviors crucial to dog welfare. Here, we test the playful learning hypothesis to examine whether play after a training session increases a dog's success in learning two basic Canine Good Citizen behaviors: "sit" and "stay". In two studies, the dogs experienced brief training sessions and then were assigned to either play or rest. The next day, they returned for another brief training session, and we measured any change in the duration that the dogs were able to hold a "sit" and "stay" from the first day. In Experiment 1, the subjects with low baseline levels of ability improved more after playing than those subjects that simply rested after training. However, Experiment 2, which further controlled for exercise and time spent with trainers, and standardized the measure of success across dogs regardless of their initial ability levels, did not replicate the improved performance in response to play after a training session. Overall, we find limited support for the application of the playful learning hypothesis to everyday training and suggest avenues for future research to determine how play might improve training outcomes for pet dogs.