Pet Naming Practices in Turkey

The PET DINER study was a telephone survey conducted to better understand why pet owners make certain nutritional decisions for their pets. Both dog and cat owners were included, which allowed us to differentiate the way people feed pet cats vs. pet dogs and how that might reflect owners’ attitudes about pet foods. Prospective survey respondents were selected from local telephone books using a randomized process. A total of 18,194 calls were made from the five study sites between May and August, 2004. 1074 people (6%) representing 619 dogs and 455 cats completed the survey. Detailed information about feeding practices was collected. Pet owners’ perceptions were assessed based on agreement/disagreement with statements regarding pet foods and the pet food industry. The Mann–Whitney Rank Sum test was used to detect differences between dog and cat owners and the Kruskal–Wallis one‐way analysis of variance on ranks was used to evaluate differences among pet owners based on both type of pet and feeding practices (≥75% commercial vs. ≥50% home‐prepared diets). More cats than dogs ate commercial pet food as ≥75% of their main diet (96% vs. 87%, respectively; p < 0.001), and more dogs than cats ate a home‐prepared food as ≥50% of their main diet (6% vs. 3%, respectively; p < 0.009). For five of the statements, a difference in the attitudes of cat vs. dog owners was detected (p < 0.05). In general, this reflected more positive attitudes regarding commercial foods and less positive attitudes regarding home‐prepared foods on the part of cat vs. dog owners. Analysis based on both type of pet and feeding practices identified significant differences among groups for 18/26 statements. However, when the Dunn's Method for pairwise multiple comparisons was applied, significant differences were due to feeding practices rather than type of pet for 17/18 statements. Only differences in attitudes about the statement ‘raw bones can be safely fed to pets’ remained significant for cat vs. dog owners feeding commercial foods. In conclusion, more cat owners than dog owners feed ≥75% commercial foods to their pets and this is reflected in different attitudes about the nutritional soundness of commercial pet foods.

BackgroundOver recent years, pet owners have started to demonstrate increased sensitivity toward their companion animals, which includes an increase in the attention paid towards their nutrition, seen as a way of safeguarding their pets’ welfare. The aim of this study was to identify how pet food quality traits are perceived as being the most important by dog and cat owners. To this end, a survey of dog and cat owners was conducted by means of a questionnaire distributed in pet stores and trade fairs throughout Italy.ResultsA total of 935 surveys were collected; 61.8% of which were compiled by female pet owners. The respondents were relatively homogeneously distributed between cat (30.8%), dog (39.4%), and cat and dog (29.8%) owners. A quarter of the owners (25.5%) reported to have asked their veterinarian for advice on which pet food to buy, and almost a third (30.4%) trusted the advice posted on the web sites of well-known brands. “Contains natural ingredients” was the characteristic that obtained the highest mean score (4.3 out of 5).Elderly owners (> 65 years) placed most importance on whether a product had a high price, and least on feed appearance, animal satisfaction, and stool quality. Young owners (< 35y) paid most attention to the stool quality, the percentage of protein in the feed, and the presence of recyclable packaging, and least attention to feed appearance, smell, and animal satisfaction. Feed appearance, smell, a higher cost, and certain label indications (protein content, presence of fresh meat, grain free) were mostly important among the buyers of wet pet food. Some specific differences also emerged between dog, cat, and dog and cat owners.ConclusionsIn this survey of Italian pet food buyers, the presence of “natural” ingredients was considered to be the most important indicator of pet food quality, whereas characterized by a high price was considered least important. The data obtained from this survey could be used to help pet food companies identify which pet food quality traits are perceived as important by dog and cat owners.

Simple SummaryThis research aimed to explore cat and dog owners’ attitudes towards various pet care practices in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). An online survey was conducted from January to March 2019, and 2358 people responded to the pet care questions. The study revealed that almost all respondents felt that providing adequate housing, regular worming and flea treatments, microchipping, and vaccinations were important pet care practices. Fewer respondents felt that regular veterinary clinic visits were important, and some did not appear to understand that breeding for certain looks causes health problems for animals. Characteristics of pet owners, such as gender, ethnicity, age range, having children, having a rural upbringing, and place of residence, were associated with particular attitudes towards the various practices. Knowing about these factors will help develop strategies that ensure everyone understands what pet care practices are important for responsible pet ownership. Our findings emphasize some of the complexities that underlie NZ pet owners’ attitudes and opinions towards various pet care practices. The findings underscore the need for additional research, culturally appropriate and effective educational resources, and customized strategies to encourage responsible pet care to ensure animals, along with their owners, live good lives.This research aimed to explore cat and dog owners’ attitudes and opinions towards various pet care practices in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), and determine what factors were associated with them. An online survey composed of both closed and open-ended questions was administered from January to March 2019. A total of 2358 respondents answered the questions on pet care practices. Of these, 37.5 percent (n = 885) were both dog and cat owners, 28.0 percent (n = 652) were cat owners, and 26.0 percent (n = 609) were dog owners, while 9% (n = 212) of respondents did not own a cat or dog at the time of taking the survey. The study revealed that most respondents (>90%) acknowledge the importance of providing adequate housing, regular worming and flea treatments, microchipping, and vaccinations for their pets. Notably, demographic factors such as gender, ethnicity, age range, having children, having a rural upbringing, and place of residence influenced owners’ attitudes, with those towards cat care practices varying more than those for dogs. The study highlights the need for responsible pet ownership interventions considering these demographic factors. The study identifies a knowledge gap among pet owners concerning the importance of regular veterinary visits and the impact of breeding for certain looks on animal welfare. The use of shock collar devices provoked varying opinions on their usage for training and behavior modification. The study suggests that enhancing pet owners’ knowledge is pivotal for responsible pet ownership. Overall, the findings emphasize the need for tailored interventions that account for demographic variations for promoting responsible pet ownership and animal welfare. The findings underscore the importance of improving access to veterinary health care teams, especially in rural areas, and of providing culturally appropriate education resources for both pet owners and veterinary health care teams.

Simple SummaryPeople can develop meaningful relationships with companion animals, and they behave towards them in specific ways. For example, they spend time together in close proximity, apologize or talk to them as if they are human, and experience social support from their pets. This study aims to explain these types of interactions in a sample of cat owners and dog owners in the Netherlands. The more pet owners rated the mental abilities of their pet to be similar to those of humans (anthropomorphization), the more they displayed making-up behavior towards their pet, and the stronger they experienced social support from their pet. However, to engage in communication behavior (e.g., petting, kissing, talking) it is not necessary to anthropomorphize the pet. Dog owners anthropomorphize more than cat owners; this might be due to a higher symmetry in social behaviors between humans and dogs. Lastly, the social role of the pet (partly) mediates the association between anthropomorphization and owner behaviors and experience of social support. This mediation effect is more pronounced in cat owners compared to dog owners.Background: For sustainable and healthy relationships with pets, attributing some degree of human abilities to the pet (anthropomorphization) might be necessary. We hypothesize that the tendency to anthropomorphize pet animals is related to relationship behaviors (communication and making up) and the experience of social support. Perceiving the pet in a human social role (e.g., family member or friend) might mediate this relationship. Method: Associations were tested in a mixed sample of cat and dog owners by means of multiple linear regression, moderation, and (moderated) mediation analyses. The differences between cat and dog owners were examined with pet type as the moderator in a moderated mediation analysis. Results: Dog owners anthropomorphize their pets more than cat owners. The social role of the pet mediates the association between anthropomorphization and relationship behavior and social support. The mediation effects were stronger for cat owners than for dog owners. Moreover, our newly developed comparative anthropomorphism measure was a better predictor than the commonly used general anthropomorphism measure (IDAQ).

Simple SummaryLong-term aging survivors of human immunodeficiency virus or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) were surveyed. Some did or did not have companion dogs or cats while experiencing both the AIDS and COVID-19 (COVID) pandemics. While antiretroviral treatments have reduced AIDS fatalities, survivors still suffer challenges with disabilities and finances. The surveyed 147 HIV/AIDS survivors reported experiencing more frequent stigma, aloneness, and sadness/grief during the AIDS pandemic than during COVID. During AIDS, sadness was greater among those with cats than those without cats. During COVID, older respondents unexpectedly were sad less often than younger ones; dog owners less often felt alone and isolated than those without dogs. Support during AIDS retrospectively was better for older respondents, and better for young gays than young straight ones. During COVID, support was better for men than women. Men with dogs felt more supported than those without; women with pets felt least supported. Compared to dog owners, cat owners more often felt isolated and less often felt supported. Few dog or cat owners received support from family members in either pandemic; but during the AIDS pandemic, dog owners had family support more than cat owners.Long-term HIV/AIDS survivors responded online concerning their experiences during the AIDS and COVID pandemics. Recruited from web-based organizations for AIDS survivors, 147 answered questions on: frequency of experiencing stigma, isolation, aloneness, or grief/sadness; pet ownership; and sources of human support during each pandemic. Conditional inference trees were run to identify relevant demographic factors. Post-hoc comparisons were conducted to compare dog owners and cat owners. AIDS survivors reported more frequent feelings of stigma, aloneness, and sadness/grief during the AIDS pandemic than during COVID. Cat owners’ sadness/grief during AIDS was greater than non-owners. During COVID, older respondents unexpectedly were less often sad/grieving than younger ones; dog owners less often felt alone and isolated than non-dog owners. Support during the AIDS pandemic retrospectively was rated better for older respondents; young gays’ support was greater than young straights. During COVID, support was better for men than women. Contrastingly, women with pets felt less support than those without; men with dogs felt more support than those without. Cat owners more often felt isolated and unsupported during COVID than dog owners. Few dog or cat owners received support from family members in either pandemic; during AIDS, family support was better for owners of dogs than cats.

This prospective, descriptive study assessed caring practices of pet cat and dog owners in Northern Ireland with a survey questionnaire, focusing primarily on feeding and exercising. Owners of both pet cats and dogs reported that they fed their pets either twice or three times a day (53 and 78% for cats and dogs, respectively). However, in the case of nearly 40% of pet cat owners it transpired that they fed their cat(s) as often as the animal demanded (18.8%) or that food was available all the time (20.7%). Cat owners reported that their pets had access to outdoors (84%) and were not provided with any play time (53.1%). The highest number of pet dogs (46.1%) were reported as being walked daily for less than 1 h, and the highest number (38.4%) were played with daily for less than 1 h. Both cat (60%) and dog (61%) owners perceived the body condition of their animal ‘as it should be’ for animal age/sex. However, both pet cat (76%) and dog (63%) owners reported that neither their pet's bodyweight nor its body condition was monitored. Our results suggest not all pet cat and dog owners are aware of the fundamentals of their animals’ feeding requirements as regards health and many provide insufficient physical activity required for their animals’ health and welfare. The major strengths of the study include the size and geographic distribution of the study population allowing the generalisation of the results to other locations.

How to make telemedicine work

Online procurement of pet supplies and willingness to pay for veterinary telemedicine

Simple SummaryDemographic information including pet ownership, veterinary use, and beliefs regarding veterinary care were collected from 997 U.S. residents. Approximately half of respondents had a dog, or had a dog in the past five years, while 37% of respondents had a cat. Veterinary visits differed between cat and dog owners, with over 90% of dog owners visiting a veterinarian at any time and 40% of cat owners visiting a veterinarian at any time. Using logit models, the likelihood of visiting a veterinarian increased with the age and income of the pet owner. Being a cat owner decreased the likelihood of visiting the veterinarian. Pet ownership, veterinary use, and beliefs regarding veterinary care were elicited through the use of a nationally representative survey of 997 U.S. residents. Fifty-one percent of respondents have or had a dog in the past five years and 37% have or had a cat in the past five years. Over ninety percent of cat and dog owners had visited a veterinarian at any time, but only about 40% visited a veterinarian annually. With the rise of options in veterinary medicine, including low-cost options for vaccines and spay/neuter, further study and analysis of pet-owners use of veterinary care is warranted. Fifty-four percent of dog owners and 40% of cat owners who went to a low-cost spay/neuter clinic also went to a veterinarian/clinic/practice. This finding suggests that pet-owners who use low-cost options do so in a manner that supplements rather than replaces traditional veterinary care. Logit models were employed to evaluate the relationship between dog and cat owner demographics and visiting a veterinarian. The probability of visiting a veterinarian increased with age and income for dog owners.

Veterinary client retention by companion animal practices is influenced by whether the client feels connected to the healthcare provider. Effective communication between the veterinarian and the client facilitates that connection. To prepare new graduates for success in clinical practice, many colleges of veterinary medicine are now incorporating communication into the curriculum to emphasize its importance in establishing and maintaining the veterinarian-client relationship. A 2016 focus group study by Englar et al. evaluated dog and cat owner communication preferences for Calgary-Cambridge Guide (CCG) communication skills and concluded that dog and cat owners may have different communication needs. This study was conducted to confirm whether species-based communication preferences exist among veterinary clients. A questionnaire was distributed online and on-site, within veterinary teaching hospitals and private practices. Based upon 215 submissions from dog owners and 166 from cat owners, the communication preferences of dog and cat owners overlap. Both dog and cat owners prioritize reflective listening as the most important foundational CCG communication skill, and both prioritize asking permission as the most important core CCG skill. However, dog owners valued open-ended questions more than cat owners, and cat owners valued empathy more than dog owners. Survey limitations were largely demographic: participants were predominantly female and between the ages of 18-40 years. Survey data may therefore not be representative of the perspective of males and/or those >40 years of age.

Previous studies have shown that cat owners seem to care less about their cats than dog owners care about their dogs - both in terms of their emotional state of attachment and in their willingness to pay for services that potentially benefit the animals. One study speculated that this difference is "driven by the behavior of the pet" - that the behavior of dogs encourages care more than the behavior of cats - and therefore is a universal phenomenon. However, previous studies mostly relied on convenience sampling of owners and were undertaken in single countries. Based on responses to a questionnaire from cat and dog owners drawn from representative samples of citizens (18 to 89 years of age) in three different European countries, Denmark, Austria and the United Kingdom, we tested the degree to which owners care about their cats and dogs. We used four different measures: Lexington attachment to pets scale (LAPS), possession of pet health insurance, willingness to pay for life-saving treatment, and expectation of veterinary diagnostic and treatment options. Dog owners had higher LAPS scores in all countries. However, the difference between dog and cat owners was greater in Denmark than in Austria and the United Kingdom. More dogs than cats were insured in all three countries, but the ratio was much less skewed in favor of dogs in the United Kingdom compared to Denmark. In terms of expensive life-saving treatment, in every country, more dog owners than cat owners were willing to spend over a certain amount, but the differences were much more pronounced in Denmark compared to the United Kingdom. In Denmark and Austria, dog owners expected more veterinary treatment options to be available, but species made no difference to the expectations of UK owners. People care more about their dogs than their cats in all countries, but with a clear cross-country variation and a very modest difference in the United Kingdom. Therefore, it does not seem to be a universal phenomenon that people care much less about their cats than their dogs. This finding has practical implications for future efforts to expand the level of veterinary services provided for cat owners.

Objective: Companion animals are an important feature of the family system, and human-animal interaction is increasingly being recognized as an important social determinant of health. However, there is a need for more nuanced assessment of not only who owns pets, but how pet ownership is related to various health outcomes, and which sociodemographic and contextual factors moderate these associations. Design: Secondary analysis of cross-sectional data collected from an online, probability-based panel to generate a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States (n = 1267). Data were analyzed using hierarchical and logistic regression models. Results: Results suggested that pet owners are systematically different from non-pet owners on a number of key demographic and contextual characteristics, and these differences vary somewhat when looking at dog owners and cat owners. When controlling for individual and family-level covariates, pet ownership was not associated with overall health status or Body Mass Index, but dog ownership was associated with higher levels of physical activity. Pet ownership was associated with higher odds of having an anxiety disorder with gender moderating this relationship, but this association was not present for dog or cat owners, suggesting this relationship is limited to other types of pets. Higher odds of depression were associated with pet ownership (for both dog and cat owners), with employment status significantly moderating the relationship between dog ownership status and depression. Conclusions: These findings suggest that pet ownership is a complex and context specific phenomenon. Future research should carefully consider and control for sociodemographic predictors and use measurement and analysis approaches sensitive to the variations in human-animal relationships to fully understand how pets contribute to individual and family health and well-being.

Modern veterinary medicine offers a level of care to cats and dogs similar to that available to their owners, including blood transfusions, chemotherapy and MRI scans. The potential benefits to the animals of owners who can afford such care are obvious, but there can also be negative consequences if owners with strong emotional attachments to their pets pursue treatments that significantly reduce the quality of the animal's life while attempting to prolong it. Moreover, caring for a chronically or seriously ill animal can lead to emotional distress and financial and practical challenges for the pet owner. A questionnaire was used to survey cat and dog owners from representative samples of citizens in the UK, Austria and Denmark, to investigate owners' expectations and attitudes towards advanced veterinary care, and the factors that might influence those views. Overall, 58.4% of the pet owners surveyed believed that their pets should have access to the same treatment options as humans, while 51.5% believed that they should have access to the same diagnostic tests as humans. Owners were most likely to be neutral on the question of whether advanced veterinary care has 'gone too far' (45.3%), and to disagree with the statement that advanced care is 'unnecessary' (40.1%). In all three countries, the level of attachment owners had to their pets was most strongly associated with attitudes towards advanced care, with owners scoring higher on Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale (LAPS) being more likely to expect advanced care to be available. Other factors such as owner age, living situation (alone or not), income or possession of pet insurance were less consistently with owner attitudes. Our findings will help inform veterinarians and other health care providers about pet owner expectations and attitudes towards advanced veterinary care, and contribute to the debate on increasing specialisation within the profession.

Evidence for an association between pet behavior and owner attachment levels

Companion animals have been our social partners since ancient times. These animals, particularly dogs and cats, are also kept in households as family members. However, fewer people are able to take care of animals at home due to the increasing numbers of nuclear families and dual-income households. To investigate the need for care robots for companion animals, we conducted an online survey with dog and cat owners. In total, 1,521 and 1,219 people who have ever kept dogs and cats, respectively, completed our online survey. The results show that dog owners would prefer a humanoid care robots robot for dogs over machine-like robots, whereas cat owners showed the opposite preference; the results were statistically significant. In addition, there was a significant difference between dog and cat owners regarding owners' desires for a care robot to walk the animal outside.