Give Them a Toy or Increase Time out of Kennel at Lawn Areas: What Is the Influence of These Interventions on Police Dogs’ Welfare?
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This work was aimed at identifying the effectiveness of two interventions applied to a group of eight kennelled police dogs. Interventions consisted of access to a lawn area (350 m2) and “toy” (a 30 cm jute rag roll, hanging from the kennel ceiling), both available for 15 min a day, for four days in a row. We collected behavioural data and faecal samples for cortisol metabolites evaluation before, during and after interventions. Faecal cortisol metabolites levels were significantly reduced (Friedman, X2(3) = 12.450; p = 0.006) during the second round of intervention, regardless of the type of intervention, indicating that the interventions can have a beneficial cumulative effect. Regarding the frequency of stereotyped behaviour, cluster analysis identified two groups of individuals: (1) high-stereotyping individuals (n = 3) that had a tendency to reduce stereotyping behaviours in the lawn intervention when compared to toy intervention (Friedman, X2(3) = 2.530; p = 0.068), and (2) low-stereotyping animals (n = 5) that did not present significant behavioural changes during the experiment. The variety of behavioural and endocrine parameters evaluated highlights the need to account for the individual in behaviour and welfare research. Overall, our results suggest that even simple environmental enrichment can be an effective method to mitigate behaviour and physiological signs of stress.
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Commercially bred dogs tend to exhibit behavioural and psychological irregularities compared to the general population of pet dogs, such as stereotypical behaviours.
“They tend to exhibit behavioural and psychological irregularities compared to the general population of pet dogs [203,212], such as in stereotypical behaviours [213].”
From Ethical Concerns about Fashionable Dog Breeding (2024) · cites this paper as [213]
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- Authors
- Nogueira, L. B., Palme, R., & Mendonça-Furtado, O.
- Affiliations
- Universidade de São Paulo (BR)
- University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna (AT)
- Departamento de Psicologia Experimental, Instituto de Psicologia, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP 05508-030, Brazil
- Corresponding author
- Nogueira, Letícia Bicudo
- Venue
- Animals
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2021-07-30
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 2264
- ISSN
- 2076-2615 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8388378
- OpenAlex
- W3189610091
- Cited by
- 7
- References
- 66
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 4
- FWCI
- 1.43
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Animals (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (0001)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Veterinary › Small Animals › Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Human-Animal Interaction Studies
- Health Sciences › Veterinary › Small Animals › Veterinary Orthopedics and Neurology
- Keywords
- police dogs, animal welfare, environmental enrichment, toys, faecal cortisol metabolites, stress, stereotypy, individual differences, dog behavior
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