New Doginburgh test aims to standardize canine paw preference

A new canine laterality test from the University of Bari is trying to move paw-preference research beyond the familiar “Kong test.” Published in Royal Society Open Science in June 2026, the “Doginburgh Inventory” combines four separate motor tasks into a single standardized score intended to classify dogs as strong left-pawed, weak left-pawed, ambilateral, weak right-pawed, or strong right-pawed. The authors say that approach offers a more complete picture of motor laterality than one-off tests that may vary by task. (researchgate.net)

That matters because canine paw preference has been studied for years, but the field has been messy. The Bari paper notes that prior studies often used only one task, or analyzed multiple tasks separately, leading to inconsistent findings about whether dogs show any population-level bias. A meta-analysis cited by the authors found that 68% of dogs show individual-level asymmetry, even if population-wide left-versus-right trends are less clear. The new inventory is meant to bring those strands together by weighting multiple behaviors in a format modeled on the human Edinburgh Handedness Inventory. (researchgate.net)

In the new study, researchers assessed 43 healthy family dogs that met the inclusion threshold of completing at least three of four tasks with at least 10 valid unilateral paw uses per test. The four tasks were the Kong test, a food-reaching test, a stationary first-stepping test on stairs, and a dynamic first-stepping test on a transition platform. Valid datasets were available for 38 dogs on the Kong task, 37 on food-reaching, 45 on the stairs task, and 43 on the platform task. Across the individual tests, the authors found no population-level bias, reinforcing their argument that a composite framework is more informative than any single measure alone. (researchgate.net)

The scoring system is one of the paper’s main changes. Traditional approaches often sort dogs only as left-pawed, right-pawed, or ambilateral. The Doginburgh Inventory instead creates a five-category scale, with cutoffs for weak and strong preferences on each side. That allows researchers to capture not just direction, but strength of lateralization, which the authors argue may be behaviorally meaningful. Commentary in Psychology Today summarizing the paper reported that about 79% of dogs in the study showed some paw preference under the composite method, while about 21% were classified as ambilateral. (researchgate.net)

Outside experts see the tool as potentially useful, if still early. In Scientific American, Shany Dror, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna who was not involved in the study, said the inventory could help researchers understand how brain lateralization relates to behavior, emotions, and cognition in dogs and other species. Popular coverage has also emphasized that the test is relatively easy to reproduce, at least in principle, using home or clinic-friendly observations, though the study itself was still a controlled research project rather than a validated clinical screening tool. (scientificamerican.com)

Why it matters: For veterinary teams, this is less about telling pet parents whether a dog is a “lefty” and more about whether laterality can become a practical behavioral biomarker. The Bari authors tie paw preference direction and strength to a wider literature on fearfulness, stress, cognitive bias, and working-dog performance. Their discussion cites evidence that weakly lateralized or ambilateral dogs may be more fearful of thunderstorm sounds, that strong lateralization may be associated with more confident behavior in novel settings, and that acute or chronic stress can shift dogs toward greater ambilaterality. Older work has also linked laterality measures to guide-dog training outcomes. None of that makes paw preference ready for routine decision-making on its own, but it does support continued interest in laterality as one piece of behavioral assessment. (researchgate.net)

There are also clear limitations. The sample was small, the dogs were selected for being behaviorally suitable for testing, and not every dog completed every task. The authors themselves frame the inventory as a methodological advance, not a final answer. For clinicians and behavior researchers, the immediate takeaway is that if paw preference is going to be studied or discussed, a multi-task standardized approach may be more defensible than single-test shortcuts. (researchgate.net)

What to watch: The key next question is whether the Doginburgh Inventory holds up in larger cohorts, in clinical behavior populations, and in working-dog programs, and whether composite laterality scores can predict outcomes that matter in practice, such as stress resilience, training success, or welfare risk. (researchgate.net)