What the paw your dog reaches with says about its brain

Doges Editorial · 2026-06-14 · 5 min read

Scientists in Italy have developed a four-task test — the Doginburgh Inventory — to determine whether your dog is left-pawed, right-pawed, or neither. The answer connects to fear, confidence, immune function, and the brain's emotional wiring.

Watch your dog the next time they reach for something just out of range — a treat wedged under the sofa edge, a Kong toy rolling slowly toward the wall. They'll extend one paw, almost without thinking. Left or right. Most owners never notice which one. A team of researchers at the University of Bari Aldo Moro in Italy has spent years thinking about nothing else.

A test named after a city

In a study published June 10, 2026, in Royal Society Open Science — and reported by Smithsonian Magazine — veterinary physiologist Marcello Siniscalchi and behavioral neuroscientist Sevim Isparta introduced what they call the Doginburgh Inventory: a four-task test for determining whether a dog is left-pawed, right-pawed, or neither. The name borrows from the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory, the questionnaire that has classified human handedness since the early 1970s. Adapting it for paws turned out to require considerably more thought than the researchers initially expected.

The fundamental problem with measuring canine pawedness is that dogs don't pick a consistent side across every situation. A dog might reach steadily to the left when grabbing food from under the couch, then step off a curb with its right paw without breaking stride. Earlier studies that relied on a single task produced inconsistent results that refused to generalize. The field needed something more composite.

Over the years, scientists have used different ways to measure paw preference. This means that there is a lot of inconsistency between studies.

— Marcello Siniscalchi, veterinary physiologist, University of Bari Aldo Moro

Four tasks that work together

To fix this, the researchers designed four tasks across two categories: manipulation and locomotion. The first manipulation test was the Kong test — a rubber toy filled with food placed on the floor. Researchers watched which paw the dog used to stabilize the toy while working out how to get the treat inside. The second was a food-reaching test conducted at home: owners placed their dog's favorite snack just under a piece of low furniture and filmed which paw reached in, across multiple trials.

The locomotion tests came next, back at the lab. In one, each dog sat at the top of a five-step staircase and researchers recorded the very first paw it moved to begin the descent. In the other, dogs walked on a leash toward a raised transition platform — essentially a curb — and researchers watched which paw extended first as they stepped down. Forty-three healthy family dogs of various breeds, ages 1 to 10, went through all four tasks.

What they found

Dogs do not show a strong population-level preference the way humans do. About 90 percent of people favor their right hand; nothing close to that emerged in the dogs. Of the 43 tested, 11 were strongly left-pawed, just 3 were strongly right-pawed, and the rest scattered across the middle categories. About one in five showed no consistent preference at all — what researchers call ambilateral.

Those numbers fit neatly with the broader picture from the literature. A 2019 meta-analysis by Ocklenburg and colleagues in the journal Laterality, pooling data across prior studies, found that 68 percent of domestic dogs show a consistent individual-level paw preference. A large owner-reported survey of nearly 18,000 dogs found 74 percent with a distinct preference, of which 58.3 percent favored the right paw — a far weaker bias toward one side than in humans, but a real signal nonetheless. (Source: Ocklenburg S. et al., Laterality, 2019; https://doi.org/10.1080/1357650X.2019.1578228)

The four tasks also didn't always agree with each other. The food-reaching test and the staircase test produced the strongest individual paw biases. The walking-platform test produced weaker ones. A dog that was decisively left-pawed when reaching under furniture might be genuinely ambilateral when stepping off a curb mid-walk. This is exactly why single-task tests kept returning confusing results — and why the Doginburgh approach matters.

What the paw tells you about the brain

This is where pawedness stops being a parlor trick and starts getting genuinely interesting. The link between paw preference and behavior runs through how each hemisphere of the brain is organized. Animal behavior researcher Deborah Wells of Queen's University Belfast has explained the connection clearly.

The left side of a dog's brain — which controls the right side of its body — is more concerned with processing positive emotions. By contrast, the right side of a dog's brain — which controls the left side of the body — focuses more on negative emotions, such as fear or anxiety.

— Deborah Wells, animal behavior researcher, Queen's University Belfast

The downstream effects are measurable. Past research suggests left-pawed dogs tend to be more pessimistic than their right-pawed counterparts. Ambilateral dogs — those with no strong preference — seem particularly susceptible to thunderstorm anxiety. Right-pawed sheepdogs have been observed to be more aggressive toward livestock during herding trials. And remarkably, a 2006 study by Quaranta, Siniscalchi, and colleagues at Bari found that left-pawed dogs produced measurably lower titers of anti-rabies antibodies and lower interferon-γ levels after vaccination compared to right-pawed and ambilateral dogs — evidence that paw preference and immune function share a common neurological root, likely the sympathetic nervous system. (Source: Quaranta A. et al., Behavioural Brain Research, 2006; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2005.08.001)

Stress itself can shift where a dog lands. A 2023 study published in Scientific Reports tested working dogs before and after acute stress exposure and found a significant drift toward ambilaterality: roughly 48 percent were ambilateral under stress conditions compared to 40 percent at baseline. A related finding from shelter research: when dogs enter a kennel environment, their paw preference measurably shifts toward the left within the first week — a neurological fingerprint of distress. (Source: Isparta S. et al., Scientific Reports, 2023; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31213-7)

Strength of lateralization matters just as much as direction. Dogs with strong, consistent paw preferences across multiple tasks tend to behave more confidently around new objects and unfamiliar environments. The paw your dog reaches with is one small signal in a much larger story about how it moves through the world — and what its nervous system is doing while it does.

The dog who had a reason

One moment from the research has stayed with Siniscalchi. A dog arrived at the lab having scored extraordinarily high on left-paw use during its home food-reaching trials — almost suspiciously high. When the owner came in for the locomotion tests, the explanation became clear: the dog's right paw had been surgically removed to treat cancer. The left paw was the only option it had ever had. Siniscalchi found he couldn't let go of the follow-up question.

Why did the owner choose to participate in the experiment? That's the real question.

— Marcello Siniscalchi, University of Bari Aldo Moro

How to try it with your own dog

The Doginburgh Inventory is designed to be replicated at home without any equipment beyond a Kong toy and some food. Put a treat under a piece of furniture and film which paw your dog reaches in with — the study used 10 to 20 trials per task, but even the first few tend to be a reliable indicator of overall preference. Set a Kong toy on the floor and note which paw steadies it. Have your dog sit at the top of a flight of stairs, call it down, and watch the first paw it moves. Take it for a walk and observe which leg extends first off a curb.

'It's easy to do,' says Siniscalchi. 'But pay attention to small details when your dog is carrying out the trials, because some can skew the results.' The position you stand in, for instance, can subtly influence which direction your dog steps toward first. The test works best when the dog is focused on the food or the movement — not on you.

The thing you've been walking past

Most of us have spent years watching our dogs reach for things, step off curbs, and lead through doorways — without ever thinking to notice which paw keeps showing up. The Doginburgh Inventory makes that observation deliberate. And what it might tell you isn't just left or right: it could be a small window into whether your dog navigates the world from a place of confidence or something more cautious and uncertain.

Next time you're out walking and your dog steps down from a curb or a low wall, watch closely. That's the last locomotion test right there, built into the route you've both been running for years. The data was always there. You just weren't counting.