French bulldogs, pugs, and other short-nosed dog breeds have had a grip on dog lovers for years now. Frenchies first ended the labrador retriever’s 31-year reign as America’s favorite dog breed in 2023 and have remained on top of the American Kennel Club’s rankings ever since. Their infantile faces, compact size, and reported calm and playful demeanor, appear to outweigh the costs of handling their long documented chronic health issues.
According to a study recently published in the journal Animals, short noses may influence these breeds’ behavior, but their body size and owner treatment are equally as important. The team found that short-nosed breeds may really be more calm and less reactive than other types of dogs, but these benefits often do not emerge without proper training.
Nature vs. nurture
Owners typically describe short-nosed dog breeds as interactive, friendly, and playful. A 2021 study even showed that these types of dogs make eye contact with humans more frequently than other breeds and are also more effective at following human gestures.
The team from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary was curious if these positive behavioral traits actually stem from their headshape or if they are a result of good training and pet ownership. To learn more, they compared four personality traits and four behavioral problems in over 5,000 purebred dogs. They looked at these in relation to the breeds’ head shape, body size, keeping conditions, and owner characteristics, using questionnaire data that was collected in Germany.
They found that when only head shape is considered, short-nosed dogs appear calmer and bolder than long-nosed dogs. However, they also show some less favorable traits. They are more difficult to train, reluctant to return when their name is called, and overreact to guests arriving at their house.
Additional analysis also revealed that the typical short-nosed dog from their survey is more often smaller, young, unneutered, untrained, kept exclusively indoors, and allowed on the bed more frequently than other dogs. Their owners are also typically young women who have never been a pet parent before, live alone, and spend a lot of time with their dog. These factors also influence behavior, and could obscure the direct effects of head shape. For example, experienced dog owners usually have better-trained animals, older dogs are generally calmer, and smaller dogs are generally more likely to jump up on people.
Traits linked to head shape
In the next phase of the study, the team used more detailed statistical analyses to examine if external factors suppressed or amplified that link between head shape and behavior.
“We found that the low trainability of short-nosed dogs is mainly due to their small body size and lack of training — not their head shape. When we control for these influences, there’s no difference in trainability across head shapes,” Borbála Turcsán, a study co-author and biologist said in a statement.
However, the analyses also revealed that some behavioral traits really are directly linked to head shape. For example, short-nosed dogs are innately less friendly toward other dogs, but this is offset by their youth (younger dogs are typically more sociable). When the effects of lack of training, small size, and pampering are all accounted for, short-nosed dogs are genetically less likely to show other “bad dog” behaviors, including jumping up on people, pulling on the leash, or reacting excessively when guests arrive.
“Calmness, boldness, and poor recall response are all traits specific to short-headed dogs. These behavioral traits are directly connected to head shape and remain significant even when we control for background factors,” Turcsán adds.
[ Related: Humans might just love French bulldogs because they remind them of babies.]
Innate traits don’t make up for good training
As for why short-nosed breed behavior might be directly related to headshape, it may all come back to how their brains are built.
“The brains of short-nosed dogs are more rounded, and their patterns of brain activity differ from those of other breeds, so it’s easy to imagine that their brains regulate behavior differently,” said biologist Enikő Kubinyi. “It’s also possible that dogs with breathing difficulties, pain, or musculoskeletal issues move less and seek comfort, which owners interpret as calm behavior.”
These dogs have some innate positive traits (primarily that calmness and low reactivity), but the negative effects of small size and lack of training can negate them. The team stresses that even flat-faced dogs need consistent training and not pampering for those good traits to really show when at the dog park.
