EXCLUSIVE: The Labradoodle Who Strutted Into Buckingham Palace—And Stole a Queen’s Spotlight

Meet the fluffy celebrity whose good deeds outshine his famous fan club.

Words by Stanley Coren, PhD, DSc, FRSC

Info current as of August 21, 2019

His person, Eric, never imagined the journey they’d take. What began as a simple companionship blossomed into a mission, with Bocker at the centre of a movement that mixes therapy visits, charity events, and pure delight wherever he goes.

The duo even opened a dog café, a cozy spot where the community could gather around their shared love of animals. It became less a business than a hub for the city’s softhearted dog crowd.

Bocker’s rescue work is staggering in scale—efforts tied to his name have helped more than 350,000 animals, with a presence spanning roughly nine years of tireless advocacy. From comforting 9/11 responders to greeting crowds near Buckingham Palace, the dog has turned celebrity into lifesaving action.

If you ever doubted that one scrappy pup could move a city, Bocker’s story is the rebuttal. He didn’t wait for permission to make a difference—he just showed up, tail first.

Their large study gathered data on 1,681 dogs across more than 50 breeds. Owners filled out a questionnaire describing their pets’ personalities, measuring five dimensions: fearfulness, aggression toward people, aggression toward animals, activity/excitability, and responsiveness to training. Owners also completed a second questionnaire on their own personality, giving the five major human factors. Psychology students memorize those via OCEAN—Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.

This study was one of those that asked several complex questions at once, so it swept in many variables. As is typical when a net is cast that wide, the authors relied on heavy statistical analysis that’s hard for a reader without stats training to follow. Yet buried in the confusing tables was the answer my colleague wanted—plus a few other interesting finds.

One surprise: dog personalities paralleled their owners’ in four of the five dimensions. Extraversion means energetic, sociable, outgoing, active. Conscientiousness means organized, dependable, self-disciplined. Agreeableness means friendly and cooperative rather than suspicious or hostile. Neuroticism means prone to stress and unpleasant emotions like fear and anxiety. Comparing dogs to owners, the researchers reported:

“Some of the most intriguing results were instances of personality ‘compatibility’ between owners and their dogs. For example, extraverts rated their dogs as more active/excitable; conscientious owners rated their dogs as more responsive to training; agreeable owners rated their dogs as less aggressive; neurotic owners rated their dogs as more fearful.”

The similarities may build over time simply because dog and human share an environment and experiences. Or people may simply pick dogs whose personalities mirror their own.

Back to my colleague’s question: this study confirms dog personalities do shift systematically over time, much like ours. The most predictable change is in activity and excitability. As expected, younger dogs were more active and excitable than older ones, with a slow, steady decline across the lifespan.

The two aggression measures—toward people and toward other animals—both rose and fell with age, peaking around six to eight years. Younger and older dogs showed lower aggression on both fronts.

The finding I found most surprising was responsiveness to training. Most people who work with dogs feel pups are most trainable and that it fades with age; these results say the opposite—responsiveness rises steadily from puppyhood, peaks at six to eight, then declines. The early rise is because young dogs are more excitable and distractible, which gets in the way. Past the peak, the later decline is no steeper than the earlier rise. In other words, you can teach an old dog new tricks, and he’ll learn at the same rate as in puppyhood.

Several findings also showed obedience training favourably shapes personality. A dog who gets obedience training, with an owner who enjoys the sessions, is more likely to show positive traits—less aggression toward people or animals, for instance. But the most striking result concerns fearfulness (the canine version of human neuroticism). Fear and anxiety rarely change with age—except in obedience-trained dogs, who showed a marked drop in overall fearfulness.

William Chopik summed it up: “We expected the dogs’ personalities to be fairly stable because they don’t have the wild lifestyle changes humans do, but they actually change a lot.” Knowing how canine personality shifts across life can ease our relationships with them. Understanding that your wild, hard-to-train two-year-old will calm and grow more trainable over the next years is a real comfort. And advancing age is no excuse to skip training!

Related Reading: What Your Dog Says About You!