Does Your Pet Favor its Left or Right Hand?

THE BREGMAN VETERINARY GROUP 

www.BregmanVetGroup.com

Dr. Stefanie Schwartz of the Veterinary Neurology Center in Tustin, California, believes she has developed and accurate method to test whether your pet is right or left handed. The fact of which paw your pet favors will not change much about they way your pet acts, but this test was developed to satisfy the curiosity factor in this trait.  

Researchers are currently studying left an right brain connections, genetics and sexual orientation of some animals, which some day might effect the way we breed and train animals.  For example in American horse racing, the horse needs only to turn left, opposed to some foreign competitions where the horse must turn both ways.  They will need to be ambidextrous, so they don’t trip themselves up.  

90 percent of humans are right handed, but this trait isn't translated to cats and dogs, which show numbers much closer to 50-50.  There are many obvious ways to test for this, for example what paw it uses to hold a toy down for which paw they tend to give when asked.  But these tests can be skewed by factors such as unknown injury or arthritis, which may cause the pet to favor its non-dominant paw.  

Although this test may seem trivial for common house pets, this research is being used to accurately assign the best possible animals for jobs such as Seeing Eye dogs, or military K-9s.  These factors could be crucial in life and death situations and we are always looking for the best possible ways to be prepared for the unpredictable!