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Active and social life is associated with lower non-social fearfulness in pet dogs
Behavioural problems are leading welfare issues in domestic dogs. In particular, anxiety-related behavioural problems, such as fearfulness and noise sensitivity are highly prevalent conditions that cause distress to fearful dogs. To better understand the environmental factors associated with non-soc...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7426946/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32792641 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70722-7 |
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author | Hakanen, Emma Mikkola, Salla Salonen, Milla Puurunen, Jenni Sulkama, Sini Araujo, César Lohi, Hannes |
author_facet | Hakanen, Emma Mikkola, Salla Salonen, Milla Puurunen, Jenni Sulkama, Sini Araujo, César Lohi, Hannes |
author_sort | Hakanen, Emma |
collection | PubMed |
description | Behavioural problems are leading welfare issues in domestic dogs. In particular, anxiety-related behavioural problems, such as fearfulness and noise sensitivity are highly prevalent conditions that cause distress to fearful dogs. To better understand the environmental factors associated with non-social fear, including noise sensitivity, fear of novel situations, and fear of surfaces and heights, a large online survey including data on 13,700 Finnish pet dogs was performed by the dog owners. After fulfilling inclusion criteria, this data consisted of 9,613 dogs with fear of fireworks, 9,513 dogs with fear of thunder, 6,945 dogs with fear of novel situations, and 2,932 dogs with fear of surfaces and heights. Logistic regression analyses revealed that dogs with frequent non-social fear had experienced less socialisation during puppyhood, were more often neutered, had inexperienced owners, lived without conspecifics, participated less frequently in activities or training, and lived in more urban environments. In addition, we identified several breed differences, and a tendency of more common non-social fear in small dog breeds, which suggests a genetic background. Non-social fearfulness has a negative effect on well-being of the dogs. Our findings suggest that the socialisation and the living environment and the value of other dogs’ company and owner interaction via activities and training may improve the well-being of the dogs. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7426946 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-74269462020-08-14 Active and social life is associated with lower non-social fearfulness in pet dogs Hakanen, Emma Mikkola, Salla Salonen, Milla Puurunen, Jenni Sulkama, Sini Araujo, César Lohi, Hannes Sci Rep Article Behavioural problems are leading welfare issues in domestic dogs. In particular, anxiety-related behavioural problems, such as fearfulness and noise sensitivity are highly prevalent conditions that cause distress to fearful dogs. To better understand the environmental factors associated with non-social fear, including noise sensitivity, fear of novel situations, and fear of surfaces and heights, a large online survey including data on 13,700 Finnish pet dogs was performed by the dog owners. After fulfilling inclusion criteria, this data consisted of 9,613 dogs with fear of fireworks, 9,513 dogs with fear of thunder, 6,945 dogs with fear of novel situations, and 2,932 dogs with fear of surfaces and heights. Logistic regression analyses revealed that dogs with frequent non-social fear had experienced less socialisation during puppyhood, were more often neutered, had inexperienced owners, lived without conspecifics, participated less frequently in activities or training, and lived in more urban environments. In addition, we identified several breed differences, and a tendency of more common non-social fear in small dog breeds, which suggests a genetic background. Non-social fearfulness has a negative effect on well-being of the dogs. Our findings suggest that the socialisation and the living environment and the value of other dogs’ company and owner interaction via activities and training may improve the well-being of the dogs. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-08-13 /pmc/articles/PMC7426946/ /pubmed/32792641 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70722-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Hakanen, Emma Mikkola, Salla Salonen, Milla Puurunen, Jenni Sulkama, Sini Araujo, César Lohi, Hannes Active and social life is associated with lower non-social fearfulness in pet dogs |
title | Active and social life is associated with lower non-social fearfulness in pet dogs |
title_full | Active and social life is associated with lower non-social fearfulness in pet dogs |
title_fullStr | Active and social life is associated with lower non-social fearfulness in pet dogs |
title_full_unstemmed | Active and social life is associated with lower non-social fearfulness in pet dogs |
title_short | Active and social life is associated with lower non-social fearfulness in pet dogs |
title_sort | active and social life is associated with lower non-social fearfulness in pet dogs |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7426946/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32792641 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70722-7 |
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