phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at o:3705 DOI 10.3390/ani14182634 Why Do People Choose a Particular Dog? A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Factors Owners Consider Important When Acquiring a Dog, on a Convenience Sample of Austrian Pet Dog Owners Selecting a dog that is incompatible with the owner's expectations can negatively impact both parties. Previous studies on dog acquisition have primarily focused on shelter environments, using closed-ended questions to assess hypothetical preferences. In contrast, our study employed open-ended questions with a convenience sample of Austrian dog owners (N = 1077) to retrospectively explore why the owners chose their dogs. We also examined consistency in owners' responses and the influence of owner characteristics (age, education, household composition, previous dog experience, purpose of acquisition) on their reasons. Content analysis revealed 24 codes; the frequency of codes was 2.4/response. The most frequent codes were breed-based choice (29%), choosing on a whim, without careful consideration (24%), work/sport skills (22%), and rescuing a dog (17%). The least frequent were the age (1%), health (1%), sex (1%), and guarding skills (0.6%) of the dog. Twelve codes were consistent over time, and ten were consistent across dogs, indicating that the owners showed a consistent preference for certain traits. Except for the owner's education level, all characteristics affected the likelihood of mentioning at least one code. Most associations were found with the presence of children in the household: owners with children preferred friendly, easily manageable, and easy-to-train dogs and were less likely to adopt or rescue compared to owners living without children. Our findings also highlight discrepancies between spontaneous (free-text) reports and responses to closed-ended questions, underscoring the importance of qualitative data in better understanding the motivations behind and the factors influencing dog acquisition. eng Animal Shelters Behavior Benefits Welfare Friends 2024-11-25T09:41:03.509Z LOMv1.0 Author BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Udvarhelyi-Tóth;Kata Mária; FN:Kata Mária Udvarhelyi-Tóth END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Iotchev;Ivaylo B.; FN:Ivaylo B. Iotchev END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Kubinyi;Eniko; FN:Eniko Kubinyi X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4468-9845 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Turcsán;Borbála; FN:Borbála Turcsán X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0197-5243 END:VCARD https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/scheme https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/text Textdokument Text LOMv1.0 yes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 application/pdf 902195 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/o:3705 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/api/object/o:3705/thumbnail LOMv1.0 discipline