Abstract
Guide dogs for the blind help blind people physically and mentally in their daily lives. Their qualifications are based on health, working performance, and temperament; approximately 70% of failure dogs are disqualified for behavioral reasons. In order to achieve an early prediction of qualification, it would be essential as the first step to identify important temperament traits for guide dogs. Therefore, we administered a questionnaire consisting of 22 temperament items to experienced trainers to assess candidate dogs at Japan Guide Dog Association after three months of training, which was at least three months prior to the final success (qualified as a guide dog) or failure (disqualified for behavioral reasons) judgment. Factor analyses of question items stably extracted three factors with high internal consistency: "Distraction", "Sensitivity", and "Docility". When we compared factor points between success and failure dogs, success dogs showed significantly and consistently lower "Distraction" points and higher "Docility" points. Additionally, "Distraction" point could predict qualification with 80.6% accuracy and detect 28.2% of the failure dogs that had higher "Distraction" point than any success dogs. Of the nine question items not included in the three factors, two items ('Aggression' and 'Animal interest') were consistently associated with qualification. These results suggest that "Distraction" is stably assessable and has the strongest impact on success or failure judgment, therefore, it would become the first target to establish a behavioral test which may lead to an early prediction of guide dog qualification.
