Study of the socialization and human interaction on the improvement in animal behavior in dogs housed in the insular shelter of Gran Canaria.

Abstract

Animal welfare is considered an important basis in veterinary medicine. It is essential to consider the effect that the human-dog interaction has on it, as well as the environment where the animals, in this case shelter dogs, live. Dog shelters tend to be characteristically stressful places for dogs, due to social isolation, unfamiliar environment, high noise, physical restriction, absence of routines or habits and limitations. Objective: The aim of this study is to test whether or not there is an improvement in the welfare, behavior and quality of life in shelter animals experiencing environment enrichment and human interactions with positive reinforcement. Materials and Methods: This study was carried out by using two groups of 5 animals specially selected for this work: A Group Treatment subjected to the human interaction and positive environment with ludic activities, and a B Group Control that will not experience variations in their routines, both groups were evaluated with a behavioral test and measurements of analytical and physiological parameters, these measurements were taken before and after the treatment. Results: The evaluation of the animals showed significant variations between the measurements of both groups of (p-value = 0.01587) for the behavioral tests, (p-value =0.045) for the weight measurements, of (p-value <0.001) for the platelet measurements and finally of (p-value = 0.017) of the white blood cells. Conclusions: The implementation of environmental enrichment measures, outside cage recreation and human interaction, it may be possible to improve at least some aspects of the quality of life and behavior of shelter dogs. However, we believe that it is necessary to go deeper into more specific studies and to evaluate our study variables independently, as well as to consider a larger sample of animals.