The judgement bias test represents one of the most applied tools to evaluate animals’ optimistic/pessimistic attitude and to infer their emotional and welfare state accordingly. The judgement bias test (JBT) has been used several times...
Facial expressions potentially serve as indicators of animal emotions if they are consistently present across situations that (likely) elicit the same emotional state. In a previous study, we used the Dog Facial Action Coding System...
Social buffering of stress refers to the effect of a social partner in reducing the cortisol or corticosterone response to a stressor. It has been well studied in mammals, particularly those that form pair bonds...
In general, codes that have been designed to safeguard the welfare of animals emphasize the importance of providing an environment that will ensure good health and a normal physiological and physical state, that is, they...
The terms short-term, temporary, and transitional are related but can have different contexts and meanings for animal husbandry. The definitions and use of these terms can be pivotal to animal housing and welfare. We conducted...
A substantial number of dogs live in animal shelters worldwide. Stressors within the shelter environment can compromise their welfare, and scientific evaluations of feasible welfare assessment methods are therefore needed. Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA) is...
The goal of this randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study was to evaluate the effect of environmental enrichment (EE) on post-operative pain and anxiety in dogs following hemilaminectomy for acute intervertebral disc extrusion (IVDE).MethodsTwenty healthy client-owned dogs...
CAIs (canine-assisted interventions) include “canine-assisted therapy” in which a therapist sets client-oriented goals, “canine-assisted activities” with recreational goals for clients, and “canine-assisted education/learning” in which teachers or coaches create learning goals for students or clients...
An uncontrolled reproduction of animals in human hands should be avoided. To meet this goal, animals are widely castrated, i.e., the gonads are completely removed. Since the gonads are the most important source of sex...
Play and welfare have long been linked within animal research literature, with play considered as both a potential indicator and promoter of welfare. An indicator due to observations that play is exhibited most frequently in...