Dogs have lived alongside humans for thousands of years. They have been used for hunting, guarding, herding, and many other tasks, but today they primarily act as companions.
Although life today may seem easy compared to their ancestors, they still face many stresses. visit to the vet.
A few years ago, French researchers showed how dog owners behave. Be well behaved in front of the veterinarian Affects your pet’s stress level. This study showed that negative owner behaviors, such as scolding, increased dogs’ anxiety during veterinary visits.
But until a recent study at Queen’s University Belfast, no one had investigated the effects of owner stress on dogs in a controlled environment.
our research This study builds on the above studies in that it specifically examines how owner stress, as measured by changes in heart rate, affects the stress dogs experience when visiting the veterinarian. It is different from
Twenty-eight owners and their dogs participated in the experiment. During the experiment, both owners and dogs wore heart rate monitors that monitored and recorded heart rate and heart rate variability to measure stress levels.
They then gave owners either stress-inducing or stress-reducing interventions and observed the effects on owners and dogs.
The stressful intervention consisted of: digital stress testowners were required to perform a mental arithmetic task and a verbal presentation task. The stress relief intervention was a 5-minute guided breathing meditation video.
We found that as dogs became accustomed to the veterinary hospital environment, their heart rates decreased. This suggests that your veterinarian should give you time to get used to the clinic before examining your dog.
Not only does this reduce stress, but it may also improve the effectiveness of tests and tests performed, as increased stress can increase measurements such as heart rate and breathing rate.
emotional contagion
It was also found that changes in the pet dog’s heart rate could be predicted from changes in the owner’s heart rate from before the experiment to during the experiment. If the owner’s heart rate increases or decreases during the experiment, the dog’s heart rate may increase or decrease accordingly.
These results suggest that dogs perceive their owners’ stress, which may influence their own stress levels through a process of “emotional contagion.”
This is a phenomenon in which humans and other animals consciously or unconsciously “capture” or imitate the emotions and behaviors of those around them.
It may also indicate that the dog is paying attention to its owner to signal its reaction to the new environment. Owners were asked not to interact with the dogs during the experiment. Therefore, owner stress assessment by the owner’s dog was performed without direct communication between owner and pet.
So what does this mean for the average dog owner? If our stress can affect our dogs, we should take that into account when visiting the veterinarian . If your veterinarian helps you feel more calm during clinic visits, your dog may also feel more at ease.
A holistic approach to veterinary care that considers the animal, owner, and environment is likely to yield the best welfare outcomes.
Although our research primarily focused on the bond between dog and owner, recent research A study of dog behavior revealed that the smell of human sweat, which is unfamiliar to dogs, affects their learning and cognition during exercise. cognitive bias test.
This test measures whether the animal is in a positive or negative emotional state and whether the animal is likely to make decisions with an optimistic or pessimistic outlook.
This shows that dogs can be affected not only by the stress of their owners, but also by the stress of strangers.
Our latest research shows that dogs are sentient animals who are influenced by the world and the people around them.
People caring for or working with dogs should keep in mind that their own stress can affect their dog’s stress.
Aoife ByrnePhD Candidate, Animal Behavior and Welfare; University of Nottingham and Gareth ArnottLecturer in Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies, Queen’s University Belfast
This article is republished from conversation Under Creative Commons License. please read original article.
