The value of using survival analysis and MSM techniques, more often applied to analyze patterns in health data, to understand animal behavior has been demonstrated utilizing data from guide dogs. Survival curves showed that if guide dogs were going to be withdrawn for behaviour reasons this occured primarily before they had qualified. After qualification, there was a steady rate in dogs withdrawn for behavior reasons, which fits with previous findings from our group using alternative methods (13). The exact numbers of dogs transitioning between stages is not shown by our data due to exclusion of dogs, which were withdrawn for guide dog owner or health reasons before reaching retirement (~20% of all dogs). Rather, these examples of use of epidemiological methods illustrate patterns of timings and effects of key explanatory variables. Survival analysis allowed modeling of the entire training and working life of a guide dog, which previously has been modeled as two outcome variables: whether a dog completed guide dog training to work with a client (or not) (15); and the lifespan of a working guide dog (13). Modeling these two outcomes together provides a better overview and reduces the number of analyses that need to be undertaken, thereby potentially reducing type 1 errors. The MSM perhaps provided the most novel information compared to previous analysis on these data. The multistate models revealed how many years of dog training (including the time spent in the home of a puppy walker and more formal guide dog training) was required for each year of dog working (approximately 1:2). The timings of movements between stages of guide dog training were different for dogs scored as more anxious or excitable. Finding that some types of dogs move more quickly through training than others could be used to help identify the characteristics of dogs that suited to shorter training times. From an applied perspective, length of training has an associated cost and there have been differences found at breed level for the effective length of training in dogs (19). The added value of using the MSM compared to previous findings shown here serves to highlight the potential it could have for other areas of studying animal behavior. Since behavior is frequently recorded in terms of behavioral states, there could be benefit in the use of MSM to model the timing and probability of movement between states.