An Evaluation of a Canine Welfare Education Intervention for Primary School Children

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study evaluated the effectiveness of a canine welfare education intervention, “Mr T’s Tickles Workshop,” for improving 8- to 9-year-old children’s canine emotion recognition, their belief about canine sentience, their knowledge of canine welfare needs, their attitudes toward cruelty to canines, and their attachment to pets. “Mr T’s Tickles Workshop” was a one-off intervention comprising a 1.5-hour workshop of welfare activities delivered to whole classrooms online. The workshop consisted of three activities: (1) a canine emotion recognition task, (2) creating a “box of comfort” of care equipment for older dogs, and (3) creating a memory jar of positive memories for children. A 2 × 2 mixed factorial design was used for the quantitative evaluation of this study. Factor one was the phase of testing (time), a repeated-measure variable (pre-test versus post-test), and factor two was the between-subject variable conditions (intervention versus control group). A sample of 120 children aged 8–9 years from five primary school classes (4 intervention classes and 1 control class) from one school participated in the study. The results showed that children in the intervention group improved significantly more than the children in the control group in terms of children’s canine emotion recognition from pre-test to post-test. There was no change in attitudes that intentional cruelty is acceptable in the intervention group; these attitudes worsened in the control group. Finally, the qualitative content analysis of children’s responses showed that feedback on the intervention was highly positive. The findings indicate that age-appropriate canine welfare education can effectively enhance children’s canine emotion recognition and attitudes toward intentional cruelty.