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Dog Owners’ Survey reveals Medical Alert Dogs can alert to multiple conditions and multiple people

Medical Alert Dogs (MADs) are a promising support system for a variety of medical conditions. Emerging anecdotal reports suggest that dogs may alert to additional health conditions and different people other than those that they were trained for or initially began alerting. As the use of medical ale...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Reeve, Catherine, Wilson, Clara, Hanna, Donncha, Gadbois, Simon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8046193/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33852599
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249191
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author Reeve, Catherine
Wilson, Clara
Hanna, Donncha
Gadbois, Simon
author_facet Reeve, Catherine
Wilson, Clara
Hanna, Donncha
Gadbois, Simon
author_sort Reeve, Catherine
collection PubMed
description Medical Alert Dogs (MADs) are a promising support system for a variety of medical conditions. Emerging anecdotal reports suggest that dogs may alert to additional health conditions and different people other than those that they were trained for or initially began alerting. As the use of medical alert dogs increases, it is imperative that such claims are documented empirically. The overall aims of this study were to record the proportion of MAD owners who have a dog that alerts to multiple health conditions or to people other than the target person and to determine whether any sociodemographic variables were associated with dogs alerting to multiple conditions, multiple people, or both. MAD owners completed an online survey that contained a series of forced choice questions. Sixty-one participants reported a total of 33 different conditions to which dogs alerted. Eighty-four percent of participants reported that their dog alerted to multiple conditions and 54% reported that their dog alerted to multiple people. This is the first study to document that a large percentage of people report that their MAD alerts to multiple conditions and/or to multiple people. We present a discussion of how these alerting abilities could develop, but questions about the underlying mechanisms remain.
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spelling pubmed-80461932021-04-21 Dog Owners’ Survey reveals Medical Alert Dogs can alert to multiple conditions and multiple people Reeve, Catherine Wilson, Clara Hanna, Donncha Gadbois, Simon PLoS One Research Article Medical Alert Dogs (MADs) are a promising support system for a variety of medical conditions. Emerging anecdotal reports suggest that dogs may alert to additional health conditions and different people other than those that they were trained for or initially began alerting. As the use of medical alert dogs increases, it is imperative that such claims are documented empirically. The overall aims of this study were to record the proportion of MAD owners who have a dog that alerts to multiple health conditions or to people other than the target person and to determine whether any sociodemographic variables were associated with dogs alerting to multiple conditions, multiple people, or both. MAD owners completed an online survey that contained a series of forced choice questions. Sixty-one participants reported a total of 33 different conditions to which dogs alerted. Eighty-four percent of participants reported that their dog alerted to multiple conditions and 54% reported that their dog alerted to multiple people. This is the first study to document that a large percentage of people report that their MAD alerts to multiple conditions and/or to multiple people. We present a discussion of how these alerting abilities could develop, but questions about the underlying mechanisms remain. Public Library of Science 2021-04-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8046193/ /pubmed/33852599 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249191 Text en © 2021 Reeve et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Reeve, Catherine
Wilson, Clara
Hanna, Donncha
Gadbois, Simon
Dog Owners’ Survey reveals Medical Alert Dogs can alert to multiple conditions and multiple people
title Dog Owners’ Survey reveals Medical Alert Dogs can alert to multiple conditions and multiple people
title_full Dog Owners’ Survey reveals Medical Alert Dogs can alert to multiple conditions and multiple people
title_fullStr Dog Owners’ Survey reveals Medical Alert Dogs can alert to multiple conditions and multiple people
title_full_unstemmed Dog Owners’ Survey reveals Medical Alert Dogs can alert to multiple conditions and multiple people
title_short Dog Owners’ Survey reveals Medical Alert Dogs can alert to multiple conditions and multiple people
title_sort dog owners’ survey reveals medical alert dogs can alert to multiple conditions and multiple people
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8046193/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33852599
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249191
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