Abstract
Hair is an emerging biological matrix in which to measure chronic HPA axis activity, offering a longer term view into an animal’s life. We explored effects of exogenous (e.g. lifestyle, medications, social environment) and endogenous (e.g. disease, behaviour) stressors on hair cortisol concentration (HCC) in a population of Border Collies (BCs). Owners of BCs were recruited and reported their dog’s lifestyle, clinical history, anxiety-related behaviour, and collected a white hair sample from their dog’s dorsal neck region. HCC was determined using established methods with a commercial cortisol assay kit. Samples from 135 BCs were analysed, with 91 healthy controls and 44 diagnosed with epilepsy as a model disease. Factors associated with higher HCC included psychosocial stressors (living with three or more other dogs) and lifestyle (engaging in competitive flyball); while factors associated with lower HCC included anxiety (stranger-directed and non-social), health (epilepsy diagnosis, with number of seizures to date negatively correlated with HCC) and medication (certain anti-epileptic drugs were associated with elevated or reduced HCC). These novel results highlight the potential of chronic stress with frequent or persisting HPA-axis hyperactivity leading to a state of hypocortisolism, and the need to consider stressor recency and recurrence when interpreting HCC data.
Highlights
The domestic dog is a species of global importance, with an estimated 10.5 million kept as companion animals in the UK alone [1]
Hair cortisol as a measure of canine chronic stress female neutered, 10.4% female entire); no effect of sex or neuter status on hair cortisol concentration (HCC) were found (p>0.05)
These results suggest that co-habiting with other dogs may be a cause of day-today chronic stress; other studies have found apparently positive effects of social companions; for example, HCC reduced in dogs following a move from solitary to paired housing [21] and length of time spent alone was positively correlated with HCC in dogs in a single-dog household, but not a multi-dog household [22]
Summary
The domestic dog is a species of global importance, with an estimated 10.5 million kept as companion animals in the UK alone [1]. Other key canine roles include military and police dogs, assistance dogs for a variety of medical conditions, with the dog considered as a model for many heritable human diseases [2]. The welfare of dogs in all of these roles is of societal interest, and quantifying their stress levels has been a topic of scientific interest over the past half a century. Stressors may be actual or perceived, and can be psychological or physiological in origin [3].
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