1. Survey
The frequency of play was one of the strongest predictors of emotional closeness. Training on the otheer hand, did here only show a significant effect in combination with play, where owners that trained frequently in general also needed to play frequently to score higher on emotional closeness than owners that only trained frequently. However, owners that played several times per day did not need to train frequently to score high on emotional closeness. Even though both the frequency of play and training were found to have a significant effect on the MDORS sub scores Dog-owner interaction and Perceived cost, more significant differences in score were found within frequency of play than training. The result in regards to the three sub scores shows that play might have a stronger effect on the relationship than training.
It should also be mentioned that the frequency of training could be associated with type of training which might affect the result of both the emotional closeness and perceived cost score due to the caregiver burden that has been shown to affect owners of dogs with problem behaviours (Kuntz et.al., 2023). Owners that face challenges with their dog in their everyday life might be more inclined to train more frequently to solve the problem whereas others might train with lower frequency and focus on training that they enjoy rather than training out of necessity. This could potentially explain why several of the plots with the frequency of training look different from those of play.
The fact that owners that trained once per day or several times per day still showed high Emotional closeness score if they also played with their dog as frequently suggests that play might mitigate the negative effects of potential challenges within the relationship.