Abstract
Simple SummaryOwner-based reports of dogs presumed to come from commercial breeding kennels (CBKs) suggest high levels of fear in this population. Fear in kenneled dogs is a serious behavioral welfare concern as it may lead to both acute and chronic stress. Novel social and non-social stimuli have been shown to elicit behaviors associated with fear in animals. New knowledge on the levels of fear in dogs from CBKs could be used to further refine protocols intended for assessment of welfare in CBKs and to improve breeders’ management practices. The aim of this study, therefore, was to evaluate how dogs from CBKs reacted to social (i.e., a person approaching) and non-social (i.e., a traffic cone and a dog statue) stimuli, and to perform a preliminary evaluation of how these responses might be used as indicators of dogs’ overall socialization levels in kennels. Results revealed that dogs had primarily mildly fearful responses to the stimuli presented. These findings are encouraging as extreme fearful reactions were rarely recorded. Nevertheless, there is a clear margin for commercial breeders to improve the socialization protocols in their kennels to better incorporate both social and non-social stimuli.Understanding the behavioral welfare of dogs in commercial breeding kennels (CBKs) is important for improving breeders’ management practices as well as dog welfare. In the current study, breeding dogs from CBKs were exposed to novel stimuli to evaluate their behavioral responses, with emphasis on indicators of fear. Subjects were presented with a standard stranger-approach test, a traffic cone, and a realistic dog statue. Sixty dogs were exposed to the three stimuli and behavioral responses were scored using an ethogram developed for this study. Dogs spent significantly more time investigating the environment, staying further away from the stimulus, and they took longer to approach and investigate when presented with the cone than with the dog statue or stranger (p < 0.01). These findings suggest that the cone elicited more fear-related behaviors than the dog statue and stranger. Given these results, in addition to socializing their dogs to unfamiliar people and other dogs within their kennels, commercial breeders should be encouraged to increase the exposure of their dogs to more diverse novel stimuli to reduce non-social fear and support the welfare of dogs while they reside in the kennel and when they transition to new homes.
Highlights
Behaviors associated with more intense fear reactions (i.e., “escaping” and “retreat”) were observed in two dogs
It is important to note that these results may have been mitigated by the test design, which was not intended to provoke intense fear responses
This goes beyond the scope of this paper as our aim was not to compare the prevalence of fear behavior in commercial breeding kennels (CBKs) to an expected outcome; it is something to keep in mind in future applications of this test
Summary
Studies focusing on the behavior and welfare of dogs from commercial breeding kennels (CBKs) were scant [1]. While research on the behavior of these dogs is still fairly limited, basic knowledge from investigations of confined dog populations, such as those kept in shelters or laboratories, may have implications on the lives of dogs from CBKs [2,3,4]. Studies have illustrated the importance of housing quality, predictability of the social environment and frequency and quality of human–animal interactions for animal welfare and longevity [5,6,7,8]. Previous research on the welfare of dogs presumably from CBKs conducted using data originating from dog owner reports [9]
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