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Abstract Among the animals on this planet, dogs are uniquely adapted for life with humans, a status that exposes them to risks of human-mediated traumatic experiences. At the same time, some lineages of dogs have undergone artificial selection for behavioral phenotypes that might increase risk or resilience to stress exposure, providing an opportunity to examine interactions between heritable and acquired traits. In a large-scale study (N = 4,497), English-speaking dog guardians reported on their dogs’ life histories, current living environments, and provided observer ratings of dog behavior using the Canine Behavior Assessment and Research Questionnaire (C-BARQ). Our analysis revealed that adverse experiences in the first six months of life, such as abuse and relinquishment, were significantly associated with increased aggression and fearfulness in adulthood, even when accounting for factors such as acquisition source, sex, and neuter status. Additionally, effects of adversity on fearful and aggressive behavior systematically varied at the breed level, suggesting heritable factors for risk and resilience for developing particular phenotypes. Our findings establish that breed ancestry and individual experience interact to show fear and aggressive behavior in pet dogs, confirming that socioemotional behavior is shaped by gene-environment interactions. 

To promote collaboration across canine science, address replicability issues, and advance open science practices within animal cognition, we have launched the ManyDogs consortium, modeled on similar ManyX projects in other fields. We aimed to create a collaborative network that (a) uses large, diverse samples to investigate and replicate findings, (b) promotes open science practices of pre-registering hypotheses, methods, and analysis plans, (c) investigates the influence of differences across populations and breeds, and (d) examines how different research methods and testing environments influence the robustness of results. Our first study combines a phenomenon that appears to be highly reliable—dogs’ ability to follow human pointing—with a question that remains controversial: do dogs interpret pointing as a social communicative gesture or as a simple associative cue? We collected data (N = 455) from 20 research sites on two conditions of a 2-alternative object choice task: (1) Ostensive (pointing to a baited cup after making eye-contact and saying the dog’s name); (2) Non-ostensive (pointing without eye-contact, after a throat-clearing auditory control cue). Comparing performance between conditions, while both were significantly above chance, there was no significant difference in dogs’ responses. This result was consistent across sites. Further, we found that dogs followed contralateral, momentary pointing at lower rates than has been reported in prior research, suggesting that there are limits to the robustness of point-following behavior: not all pointing styles are equally likely to elicit a response. Together, these findings underscore the important role of procedural details in study design and the broader need for replication studies in canine science.