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Laboratory of Applied Ethology, Department of Comparative Biomedicine and Food Science, University of Padova, Legnaro, Padua, Italy
CSC S.r.l.dCentro di Scienze Comportamentali del Cane, Padova, Italy
Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, University of Padova, Padua, Italy
d
National Reference Centre for Animal Assisted Interventions, Istituto Zooprolattico Sperimentale delle Venezie, Legnaro, Padua, Italy
b
c
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 19 August 2014
Received in revised form
3 November 2014
Accepted 6 November 2014
Available online 22 November 2014
Animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) with dogs are becoming popular worldwide, but there is a lack of
scientic data on dog selection procedures, which prevents the organizations involved from adopting a
uniform assessment method. In the absence of legal regulations and common guidelines, dogs currently
engage in diverse activities, some of which may pose more of a concern for their welfare than others. The
present study sought to standardize and validate a selection protocol of dogs involved in AAIs and to
make it available to interested Italian institutions. To meet this aim, we enrolled dogs already working in
AAIs and qualied by their handlers as fully suitable (N 20) or suitable with reserve (N 20) and
nonworker pet dogs (N 20) in this study. Each dog underwent a behavioral examination followed by
role-playing, simulating an AAI session, presenting various conditions, and unexpected stimuli possibly
occurring in AAIs. In both procedures, blinded experts judged the suitability of dogs evaluating
controllability, reliability, and predictability of their social behavior and considering possible concerns
regarding safety or welfare of patients and of the dogs themselves. Concurrent validity between procedures was fair, whereas reasons for dogs allocation resulted in moderate accordance for dogs being
aggressive, fearful, or avoidant of an unknown person. Moreover, dogs judged suitable, suitable with
reserve, or not suitable by the experts signicantly differed for the relative duration of negative interactions with unknown person, fear, and aggressiveness expressed in the role-playing. Differences in
the ability to cope with stressful situations possibly occurring in AAIs were unnoticeable with the present
protocol, and stress signals shown by dogs during the role-playing were judged by the experts or by the
handlers not to differ between dogs. Given our results, the present protocol could be easily and properly
adopted to identify dogs behavioral prerequisites for AAIs. For the procedure to work properly, each dyad
(dog and handler) should undergo behavioral examination and role-playing simulation in sequence.
2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
animal assisted intervention
behavior
behavioral examination
dog
role-playing
selection protocol
Introduction
Animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) are achieving a certain
level of recognition worldwide and this is accompanied by a
growing body of research on the effect of these programs on
* Address for reprint requests and correspondence: Lieta Marinelli, DVM, PhD,
Laboratory of Applied Ethology, Department of Comparative Biomedicine and Food
Science, University of Padova, Viale dellUniversit 16, Legnaro, Padua 35020, Italy.
Tel: (39) 049 641219; Fax: (39) 049 641174.
E-mail address: lieta.marinelli@unipd.it (L. Marinelli).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2014.11.005
1558-7878/ 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
104
105
106
showed corresponding behavioral parameter) of reasons for allocation of both evaluations were assessed.
Unless otherwise stated, behavioral parameters were reported
as medians (1st-3rd quartiles). All analyses were carried out with
SPSS (SPSS Statistics, version 20.0; IBM Corp., Armonk, NY), and the
statistical signicance was set at 5%.
Results
Concordance among suitability assessments
According to the reasons provided by the veterinarian, dogs
judged UN at the examination were fearful (N 7), stressed (N 4),
aggressive (N 6), and/or avoidant of the unknown person (N 6).
Being fearful (N 3), stressed (N 9), excitable (N 12), and/or
avoidant of the unknown person (N 2) were the main reasons to
be allocated to RV. Dogs judged UN and RV presented more than 1
reason for allocation in 76.9% (10 of 13) and 42.1% (8 of 19) of cases,
respectively.
Role-playing allocated dogs to UN because of fear (N 3), stress
(N 11), aggressive behavior (N 3), absence of interest in interaction with the unknown person (N 3), and/or avoidance of the
unknown person (N 2). Fear (N 8), stress (N 4), absence of
interest in interaction with the unknown person (N 4), and/or
avoidance of the unknown person (N 7) were the main reasons to
allocate dogs to RV. Dogs judged UN and RV in the role-playing
presented more than 1 reason for allocation in 80.0% (4 of 5) and
50.0% (10 of 20) of cases, respectively.
Reasons for allocation from the examination and role-playing
resulted in fair-to-moderate accordance for dogs being aggressive
(Cohen kappa 0.397), fearful (Cohen kappa 0.444), or avoidant
of the unknown person (Cohen kappa 0.521), whereas no
agreement was found for dogs being stressed (Cohen kappa
0.109).
The number of dogs judged SU, RV, and UN according to examination or role-playing and correspondent self-reported level by
handlers is listed in Tables 1 and 2. The level of concordance between judgments of the 2 evaluations was fair (examination and
role-playing: Cohen kappa 0.310).
Of self-reported SU dogs, 85 % (N 17) were judged suitable in
both evaluations and in 75% (N 15) of the cases were the same
dogs. Notably, 1 of the 2 dogs self-reported as RV was considered
UN by both evaluations because of aggressive behavior toward
people, which was evident during the role-playing simulation. The
other self-reported RV dog was judged UN at the examination for a
suspected phobia of conned spaces. Nine dogs judged UN at the
clinical assessment were considered SU (N 2) or RV (N 7) according to role-playing. Three of them were considered UN in the
Table 1
Number of dogs judged suitable (SU), suitable with reserve (RV), and unsuitable (UN)
according to the behavioral examination or the role-playing and the correspondent
self-reported level by handlers
Type of evaluation
Suitability level
Self-reported
SU
RV
NW
Total
Behavioral examination
SU
RV
UN
Total
17
3
0
20
10
8
2
20
1
8
11
20
28
19
13
60
Role-playing
SU
RV
UN
Total
17
3
0
20
15
4
1
20
3
13
4
20
35
20
5
60
Behavioral examination
Suitability level
SU
RV
UN
Total
Role-playing
Total
SU
RV
UN
23
10
2
35
5
8
7
20
0
1
4
5
28
19
13
60
107
Table 3
Median (1st-3rd quartile) of the relative duration of fear, aggressiveness, negative interaction, and the total number of stress signals in dog groups (SU, suitable; RV, suitable
with reserve; UN, unsuitable) allocated by self-reported level, role-playing, and behavioral examination
Behavioral parameter
Self-reported
SU
Fear (%)
Aggressiveness (%)
Negative interaction (%)
Stress signals (N)
0.0
0.0
1.0
20.5
NW
RV
(0.0-0.0)A
(0.0-0.0)A
(0.3-2.7)A
(9.0-44.0)A
0.0
0.0
1.8
21.0
(0.0-0.5)AB
(0.0-0.0)AB
(0.3-4.9)A
(6.0-78.0)A
0.2
0.0
6.2
25.5
(0.0-8.9)B
(0.0-2.7)B
(3.5-9.5)B
(9.0-66.0)A
Role-playing
SU
Fear (%)
Aggressiveness (%)
Negative interaction (%)
Stress signals (N)
0.0
0.0
1.0
20.0
P
RV
(0.0-0.0)A
(0.0-0.0)A
(0.2-3.4)A
(6.0-56.0)A
0.5
0.0
5.5
26.5
UN
(0.0-8.3)B
(0.0-0.1)A
(2.4-8.9)B
(11.0-78.0)A
0.0
3.8
6.9
23.0
(0.0-15.7)AB
(0.4-8.2)B
(3.3-11.0)B
(9.0-41.0)A
Behavioral examination
SU
Fear (%)
Aggressiveness (%)
Negative interaction (%)
Stress signals (N)
0.0
0.0
1.4
21.0
0.001
0.001
0.001
NS
P
RV
(0.0-0.0)A
(0.0-0.0)A
(0.3-3.7)A
(6.0-44.0)A
0.006
0.003
0.001
NS
0.0
0.0
3.2
24.0
UN
(0.0-0.4)A
(0.0-0.0)A
(0.6-5.3)AB
(11.0-78.0)A
6.3
2.4
6.8
31.0
(0.0-16.8)B
(0.0-5.8)B
(4.2-10.7)B
(9.0-66.0)A
0.001
0.001
0.001
NS
108
109
Elisa Pitteri was supported by a PhD grant funded by the University of Padova, Italy. The other authors declare no conicts of
interest.
Conclusions
Supplementary data
Acknowledgments
The authors express their sincere gratitude, rst and foremost,
to the dogs owners and all the associations and volunteers who
participated in this study. Being judged is never easy and all the
handlers enrolled proved to be very dedicated to their profession
and willing to improve their skills for the benet of their dogs and
patients. The authors also thank Soa Farina for her help in revising
the use of the English language in this article. We are very grateful
to the students Matteo Candaten, Lavinia Eddy, Rosanna Blonda,
Ethical considerations
Compliance with the policy of the journal on ethical consent
and standards of animal care was not applicable. All procedures
involving dogs and owners were performed in compliance with
relevant Italian legislations and have been approved by the Ethical
Committee of Istituto Zooprolattico Sperimentale delle Venezie.
The owners and handlers undertook the procedure on a voluntary
basis. They were informed about the aim of the study and gave their
explicit consent for collecting data from the video.
Conict of interest
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