dogs Archives - Page 5 of 5

Study Shows Brief “Sleepover” Breaks from the Shelter Are Good for Dogs

Linda Lombardi

Even the best animal shelter can be a stressful place for dogs. Erica Feuerbacher studies how to improve their welfare and was intrigued by a program she learned about at Best Friends Animal Society in Utah. Volunteers could take dogs with them for an overnight sleepover, even volunteers on working vacations, who could bring them to their hotel. Feuerbacher and colleague Lisa Gunter thought they could answer some questions that were in the air about the program.

“Some people thought this was really useful,” she says. “The dogs got a break from the shelter, and they learned more about the dog when it was out and about.” Others were concerned that the program was stressful for dogs. Here’s what they found.

Test Tactics

They collected urine for analysis from a sample of dogs before, during, and after a sleepover. “We found that their urinary cortisol levels, a measure of stress, significantly dropped while they were on the sleepover,” Feuerbacher says. “They came back up when they returned to the shelter, but not above baseline levels, so they weren’t more stressed when they came back.”

This suggested that the sleepovers were good for the dogs, but would they have the same effect elsewhere? Best Friends is not a typical shelter; most of the dogs are long-term residents and many had been on sleepovers before. They repeated the study at four other shelters, from small limited-intake facilities to large municipal shelters. Urinary cortisol measurements for dogs getting two-night sleepovers revealed the same stress reduction effects.

Good Stress

Repeated sleepovers appear to have a positive effect. At BFAS, the number of sleepovers a dog had previously experienced was correlated with lower cortisol, suggesting that the experience at first involves a small amount of stress.

“Likely the results we saw were the decrease from stress in the shelter overlaid with some new stress from the new situation, but the decrease overrode the small increase,” she says. “With repeated exposure to this new experience—‘I go home with new people and hang out for a night’—the dogs show an even greater reduction.”

Dogs at the four shelters in the second study also wore activity monitors as a way to follow up on something the volunteers at Best Friends reported: that the dogs would check out the new place for 20 or 30 minutes and then sleep the rest of the time. The monitors showed that the dogs not only spent much of the time resting in the foster home, they seemed to be able to get more rest when they came back to the shelter.

“The longest bout of uninterrupted rest occurred at the foster home, which made sense, but we did see some carryover effects,” she says. Dogs got significantly more rest in the shelter after the sleepover. “We had lots of reports from staff saying ‘When the dogs came back from sleepover, they’re a different dog, they’re calm in the kennel, they’re showing better’ and our data supported those anecdotal observations.”

So while the cortisol measurements did come back up when the dogs returned to the shelter, the break appeared to improve their ability to be calm in the shelter environment. “I always compare it to a weekend,” says Feuerbacher. “I’m stressed on Friday at work, I relax on Saturday and Sunday, and yes on Monday I’m stressed again, but I’ve had rest and I’m probably better able to cope with it.”

Canine R&R

The fact that dogs spent most of their time away from the shelter resting might be a bit of a surprise, but a pleasant one, as it potentially makes a program easier to implement.

“Oftentimes we think about shelter dogs that they need to go out and do things, go on hikes, and get all this environmental enrichment, but it’s possible that the shelter environment is so stimulating already that what they really need is just some quiet time,” she says. “This opens up new opportunities for fosters who might say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable taking a new dog to Starbucks, but I can take this dog home and let him sleep at my house for a few hours.”

Success Story

One shelter that participated that was so pleased with the results of the sleepover that they continued the program after the experiment was over was the Humane Society of Western Montana in Missoula. Director of Programs Mariah Scheskie says staff sees a difference in the dogs that come back from a sleepover. “When they come back, not only are they calmer, the potential adopters looking through the kennels are more drawn to them because mostly they don’t pick the dog that’s jumping up and lunging at the glass.”

Now that the program is established, it’s easy to run. Volunteers know the procedures, what to take home with which dog and what the schedule is, so it doesn’t add work for shelter staff.

The finding that dogs mostly want to rest makes participation less intimidating. “Before having this information, people did think, ‘I have to take this dog and run them for 10 miles and do all these things, and that’s a lot of pressure,” she says. “But we’re saying no, just rent a movie and open a bottle of wine and stay home.”

One unexpected finding was large differences in baseline stress at different shelters that didn’t correlate with any obvious factors. This is something Feuerbacher thinks needs further study. “Yes, sleepovers help, but we really need to understand these differences between the shelters and how housing, handling, and husbandry practices are impacting those dogs,” she says.

In the meantime, short sleepover programs can offer benefits to dogs and a new way to volunteers to get involved. Scheskie has found that it makes shelter staff feel good as well. “The volunteer is going out, everyone’s yelling goodbye, the door closes, and everyone has this huge sigh of relief together,” she says. “I looked at my coworker the other day and said, ‘It’s amazing how good that feels. You just know they’re snuggling in the bed, they’re with a human, they’re having a great time.”

This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.

For Good Cat-Dog Relationships, Focus on the Cat, Study Suggests

By Linda Lombardi
Do clients have questions about how their cats and dogs get along – or if they can get along? Information from a recent study may help you advise them.

We use the phrase “fighting like cats and dogs” as if it’s a law of nature, but many households include both species and they get along fine – or at least tolerate one another. Still, cats and dogs have very different communication styles and social structures, so harmony isn’t a given. A recent study analyzed a survey of 748 owners mostly in the United Kingdom and the United States to see what factors contribute to having an amicable multi-species family.

What Makes a Good Relationship?

Overall, most owners reported that their pets seemed to get along well. On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 was “can’t stand each other” and 10 was “close companions,” few ratings of 4 and below were found. Most relationships fell in the middle although there were a few “best buddy” scores of 9 or 10. Pets with the best relationships were reported to sometimes play together or groom one another, and some even shared food, toys, and beds.

The details suggest that if harmony is the goal, owners should pay special attention to the feline side of the relationship. While owners only rarely perceived their pets as seeming uncomfortable with one another, when they were, it was far more often the cat who was uneasy. Although pets were rarely reported to have injured each other, scuffles more often involved the cat threatening the dog than vice versa.

Age and Environment are Important

When researchers looked at factors found to correlate with better relationships, what was most important was the cat’s comfort level with the dog. The best relationships were those that reported a low frequency of incidents in which the cat appeared uncomfortable. Frequency of the dog’s discomfort was less crucial. Of the demographic factors, the most important was that the cat had been introduced to the dog at a young age – the dog’s age was less important.

Cats who lived indoors full time had better relationships (letting cats go outdoors is still common in the UK compared to the US). This suggests that the more time cats spend with others in the household, the more likely they are to eventually develop good relationships.

Dealing with Conflict

It’s important to note that the study was based on owner observations, not those of trained behavior experts.

“It would be a good follow-up study to see whether behaviorists’ views of how well they’re getting on match up with owners’ views,” says Zazie Todd, Ph.D., author of the website Companion Animal Psychology and the Psychology Today blog Fellow Creatures. “Some signs of stress, like avoiding being in the same room, people might be a bit more likely to miss, but we haven’t assessed that directly so we can’t be sure.”

Since people may not notice subtle signs of conflict and discomfort, dealing with the more obvious ones is important, even if they aren’t ending in bloodshed. Dogs chasing cats is sometimes seen as inevitable, so you may need to explain to clients that it is possible to train a dog not to pester a cat using positive methods.

Appropriate expectations are also important. “It does sometimes happen that a cat and a dog become good friends, but I think one of the striking things from the study is that the relationships mostly weren’t that close,” says Todd. Owners should see lack of conflict as a success, even if the pets don’t seem to be best buddies.

Along with training the dog, though, it’s important to give the cat some control. Make sure owners are providing high places and secluded spots where the dog can’t follow and feeding the cat in an area inaccessible to the dog. Try to see things from the feline point of view – what can be done to help the cat avoid conflict in the first place? Says Todd, “You have to think about helping the cat not to be stressed and to feel safe, as well as training the dog how to behave.”

This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.