Your dog is a good boy, but that's not necessarily because of its breed

A flock of sheep are being herd by a border collie. A new study shows that only 9% of the variation in an individual dog's behavior can be explained by its breed.

Edwin Remsberg/Getty Images

Many dog breeds act in certain ways because they have been bred to do so over the course of many generations.

A new study to be published in the journal Science finds that dog behaviors are associated with particular breeds, but that breed plays less of a role overall.

German shorthaired pointers were slightly more likely to point, golden retrievers were slightly more likely to retrieve, and huskies were more likely to howl than the general dog population.

Researchers surveyed the owners of more than 18,000 dogs and looked at their genes to see if they could be related to dog breeds.

The study found that 9% of the variation in an individual dog's behavior can be explained by its breed.

The owners of beagles, bloodhounds, coonhounds and Siberian huskies will not be surprised to learn that those breeds had a tendency to respond to human direction.

The higher the percentage of border collie in a mutt, the more responsive it is to human commands.

That is fantastic from a genetic standpoint. That means there are real behavioral differences that are connected to breeds that we can go and study, says Elinor Karlsson, a professor at UMass Chan Medical School and another author of the study.

Why dogs may not behave like others of the same breed

There were huge variations in behavior across individual dogs of the same breed.

Although golden retrievers are more likely to fetch than many other dogs, there are plenty of lazy goldens that sit and watch their owners toss tennis balls.

Researchers said that no behavior is unique to any breed. The German shorthaired pointers are not the only dogs that point.

Genetics matter, but they are not always in the same direction. Evan MacLean, the director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center at the University of Arizona, told NPR that they are not a destiny.

According to the authors of the paper, the most likely explanation for the low correlation between breed and behavior is that many modern dog breeds are relatively new in the evolutionary scope of things.

The current form of dog breeding has existed since the mid-19th century.

Humans have been helping to shape dog behaviors for thousands of years, first by giving helpful dogs food and shelter, and then by intentionally breeding them, according to the researchers.

The idea that they have been created in the last 160 years when these breeds came up didn't make sense.

Dog owners were a big help in the study

To create a data set, the researchers set up a website called Darwin's Ark that allows dog owners to upload data about their dogs and answer questions about their physical characteristics. Do they not get wet? They howl?

The study's reliance on owner surveys is both good and bad.

On the one hand, owner surveys allow for large sample sizes, but on the other, the information gathered from surveys is less reliable than results from a laboratory environment.

We like to put dogs in a situation that we can control and we can administer in the same way to every dog, and be a little bit more objective about the behavior that we see.

The paper may help aspiring dog owners shift their mindsets about how to choose a dog.

I don't think that we should be deciding if a dog will be happy with us or not, says Marjie Alonso, one of the study's authors.

She suggests that potential owners make a list of what they would like to do with a dog and then try to find a dog that meets those needs.

We have to accept that our dogs are individuals. She says that each dog is a study of one.