Social buffering in domestic dogs: Are the owners able to decrease dogs' frustration during a non-social task?

The presence of a familiar human reduces the stress responses of domestic dogs to different stimuli, a phenomenon known as social buffering. Recently, it was observed that this attenuating effect could also occur in relation to frustration generated by the omission of an expected reward in a social task. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effect of social buffering on frustration induced during extinction in a non-social problem-solving task. Dogs were exposed to an apparatus in which they had to remove embedded plastic bones to obtain the food underneath them. Three phases were carried out: acquisition, extinction, and reacquisition. Dogs were divided into two groups, one with the owner present (N = 15) and another with the owner absent (N = 15). Results showed that dogs experienced less frustration when the owner was present, identified as a lower level of frustration/stress behaviors compared to the owner absent group, confirming the existence of the social buffering phenomenon. This finding is similar to that observed during a social task. However, in this study, owner's presence did not affect any of the variables associated with problem solving, possibly because dogs were capable of solving the task on their own. The phenomenon of social buffering is relevant in relation to the effects of the close bond between dogs and their owners and how this can improve dogs' welfare, mitigating negative emotions such as stress and frustration that they may experience in a variety of contexts.