Preliminary study on the effects of attendance at dog training school on minimizing development of some anxiety disorders

Abstract

In Japan, the importance of problem behaviors in dogs has recently become more widely recognized. Many dogs in Japan are relinquished to shelters because of problematic behaviors, and anxiety-related disorders are one of the main causes of such behaviors. In many cases, dogs are euthanized because of behaviors associated with anxiety-related disorders. In the present study, the effects of attending puppy classes, attending training school sessions, living with other dogs, and the presence of children while dogs were puppies on later anxious behaviors were investigated. Questionnaires were distributed to dog owners and data pertaining to 307 dogs were obtained. Anxious behaviors in response to storms (hereafter referred to categorically as “storm”) and fireworks were also investigated. There were significant associations between storm and age, storm and attending training school, fireworks and age, and fireworks and attending training school. In multiple comparison testing, there were significant differences between juvenile dogs and other groups with regard to fireworks, and reduced anxious behaviors were significantly associated with training school attendance in the storm and fireworks subgroups. The results of this study suggest that attending training school reduced some anxiety-related behaviors. Notably, however, we did not investigate the effects of the regularity or frequency of training school attendance, or the content of such training sessions in this study. Therefore, the effects of these things on anxiety-related behaviors require further investigation.