Effects of Changing Veterinary Handling Techniques on Canine Behaviour and Physiology Part 1: Physiological Measurements

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Canine patient stress during veterinary visits is an animal welfare and health concern. Low-stress handling, combined with cooperative and collaborative care, has been proposed to reduce patient fear; however, research investigating these techniques in a veterinary setting is lacking. The aim of this study was to determine whether targeted interventions during veterinary visits helped to prevent or reduce distress in dogs. A total of 28 dogs were examined within four visits across 8 weeks. Following the first visit, dogs were split into intervention and control groups, where the intervention group received simple low-stress handling techniques and practiced collaborative care, and the control groups experienced routine care. The interventions were selected so that they could easily be incorporated into a busy veterinary hospital. There was a greater reduction in serum cortisol, an indicator of stress, between the first and last visit in the intervention group. The intervention group had a significant reduction in a composite stress response index from the first to last visit. Our findings have important applications both for dogs who are already afraid of veterinary examination and for use in a preventative context with dogs just beginning their veterinary experience. ABSTRACT: Signs of distress in dogs are often normalized during routine veterinary care, creating an animal welfare concern. We sought to test whether targeted interventions during veterinary visits affect physiological indicators of stress in dogs. Some 28 dogs were examined within four visits across 8 weeks. All dogs received the same care during the first visit and were then randomized into control and intervention groups for visits 2–4. In the intervention group, 14 dogs underwent procedures designed to reduce stress and to enlist their collaboration during examination. The 14 dogs in the control group received routine care. At each visit, heart rate (HR), serum cortisol (CORT), neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR), and creatine kinase (CK) were measured. A composite stress index based on the summed standardized scores for these markers was constructed. No differences in HR, NLR, and CK parameters between groups were found, and both groups had a decrease in CORT by visit four. However, the intervention group showed a greater overall decrease in CORT between the first and fourth visit than the control group (p < 0.04). The composite stress index differed between the first and fourth visits for the intervention group, but not for the control group (Intervention p = 0.03; Control p= 0.288). There was a tendency for the composite stress index to worsen at visit four vs. visit one for the control group. The findings suggest that dogs that participated in adaptive, collaborative exams and procedures designed to minimize fear had a greater reduction in stress over time compared to those receiving standard care.