Dog owners' awareness of and motivations towards pet cadaver donation.

Abstract

Animal cadavers still play an essential role in veterinary education. Many veterinary schools would like to participate in pet cadaver donation schemes for many reasons, including ethical resourcing of cadavers, but finding owners willing to donate their pet is challenging. The aim of this study was to investigate dog owners' awareness of pet cadaver donation. The study was conducted using Jisc online surveys with the survey being distributed via social media. In total, 708 people answered a 10-question online questionnaire. The most common reason given for why a dog owner might donate was to assist in the education of future veterinarians (n = 396, 56%). When asked to rank the options given to them upon the passing of their pet, single animal cremation was overwhelmingly the participants' favoured option (n = 483, 68.2%). Factors that might affect the findings, such as religion, financial status and cultural differences, were not explored in this study. The only incentive shown to increase the likelihood of pet owners donating to a pet cadaver scheme was the return their pet's ashes to them after the cadaver had served its purpose. This study revealed that dog owners currently have very little knowledge of pet cadaver donation.