Preventing predatory behaviour in greyhounds retired from the racing industry: Expert opinions collected using a survey and interviews

The agency domain and behavioral interactions: assessing positive animal welfare using the Five Domains Model

Animal welfare denotes how an animal experiences their life. It represents the overall mental experiences of an animal and is a subjective concept that cannot be directly measured. Instead, welfare indicators are used to cautiously infer mental experiences from resource provisions, management factors, and animal-based measures. The Five Domains Model is a holistic and structured framework for collating these indicators and assessing animal welfare. Contemporary approaches to animal welfare management consider how animals can be given opportunities to have positive experiences. However, the uncertainty surrounding positive mental experiences that can be inferred has resulted in risk-averse animal welfare scientists returning to the relative safety of positivism. This has meant that aspects of positive welfare are often referred to as animal 'wants'. Agency is a concept that straddles the positivist-affective divide and represents a way forward for discussions about positive welfare. Agency is the capacity of individual animals to engage in voluntary, self-generated, and goal-directed behavior that they are motivated to perform. Discrete positive emotions are cautiously inferred from these agentic experiences based on available knowledge about the animal's motivation for engaging in the behavior. Competence-building agency can be used to evaluate the potential for positive welfare and is represented by the Behavioral Interactions domain of the Five Domains Model. In 2020, The Model was updated to, amongst other things, include consideration of human-animal interactions. The most important aspect of this update was the renaming of Domain 4 from "Behavior" to "Behavioral Interactions" and the additional detail added to allow this domain's purpose to be clearly understood to represent an animal's opportunities to exercise agency. We illustrate how the Behavioral Interactions domain of The Model can be used to assess animals' competence-building agency and positive welfare. In this article, we use the examples of sugar gliders housed in captivity and greyhounds that race to illustrate how the agentic qualities of choice, control, and challenge can be used to assess opportunities for animals to exercise agency and experience positive affective engagement.

Shelter dog behavior after adoption: Using the C-BARQ to track dog behavior changes through the first six months after adoption

Despite millions of dogs entering and exiting shelters annually, little is known about dog behavior long-term after adoption. Entering a shelter is stressful for dogs which may inhibit or exaggerate behavior. There is a common public sentiment that dogs have a "honeymoon period" after adoption where dogs do not show their full repertoire of behaviors, both positive and negative, until getting more comfortable in their new home. The aim of this prospective observational cohort study was to identify prevalence of and changes in behavior issues in dogs throughout the first six months following adoption. The owners of ninety-nine dogs adopted from five Ohio shelters between October 1, 2020 and June 1, 2021 were surveyed 7, 30, 90, and 180 days after adoption, using the Canine Behavioral Assessment & Research Questionnaire (C-BARQ). Owners were also asked about household changes that may affect behavior. Estimated age, sex, weight, length of shelter stay, shelter intake reason, use of gastrointestinal, antibiotic, and psychotropic medications in the shelter, whether the animal had been previously returned to the shelter, and whether the owner was a first-time dog owner, were evaluated as predictors in a mixed effect regression model of different behavior measures over time. At various timepoints, dogs showed high prevalence for stranger-directed aggression (81.7%), owner-directed aggression (32.3%), dog-directed aggression (75%), familiar dog aggression (37.8%), stranger directed fear (58.2%), nonsocial fear (95.8%), dog directed fear (80.0%) and separation-related behaviors (92.6%). Over 180 days, stranger-directed aggression, excitability, touch sensitivity, training difficulty, and chasing increased, while separation-related behaviors, attachment and attention-seeking decreased. Owners reported high satisfaction with their dogs' behavior. Use of psychotropic medications in the shelter was predictive of stranger-directed aggression and touch sensitivity at home. These findings help veterinarians and shelter professionals council owners on potential behavior changes after adoption.

Satisfaction and satisfaction affecting problem behavior in different types of adopted dogs

Many dogs are relinquished worldwide, so it is important to enhance adoptions’ success. We aimed at investigating factors associated with owners’ satisfaction with adopted dogs, both in general and focusing on galgos. Data on 392 dogs (191 galgos) were gathered using an online survey, investigating dogs’ and owners’ demographics, satisfaction with the adopted dog and post-adoption behavior. Satisfaction was affected by different variables in galgos’ owners as compared to non-sighthound non-podenco dogs’ ones, with only the presence of disobedience on walks negatively affecting satisfaction in both samples. Depending on dogs’ type, the presence of some behavioral problems was associated with decreased satisfaction with the dog (e.g., destructiveness for galgos, or separation problems for non-sighthound non-podenco dogs), whereas that of others increased it (e.g., not being interested in social interactions with dogs for galgos, and shadowing for non-sighthound non-podenco dogs). The variables most often being predictors of the behaviors influencing satisfaction were dog type, with being a galgo as a negative predictor, and dog’s age, with being older as a negative predictor. Further studies on dog adopters’ satisfaction are needed.

Algorithm for Reducing Truck Noise on Via Baltica Transport Corridors in Lithuania

The section of Via Baltica going through the territory of the Republic of Lithuania is the most traffic intensive land logistics corridor in the country. The annual transportation volume has been increasing on this road; thus, the reduction of pollution caused by vehicles has become important. If gas emissions are regulated, and carriers have to pay pollution taxes, this does not apply to noise levels. The article presents the traffic intensity in this logistics corridor, measurements of the noise level at the characteristic points, its relation to the number of vehicles passing through it and an expert evaluation of proposed methods for noise energy reduction. Environmental noise is an unwanted or harmful sound that propagates in terms of both duration and geographical coverage. Noise is associated with many human activities, but road, rail and air traffic noises have the greatest impact. Due to irrationally arranged transport network, the transit flow of freight transport crosses residential areas of the city, places of rest and recreation of the population, causing high noise levels in adjacent areas. This is the biggest problem for the urban environment. Environmental noise affects many Europeans and is therefore considered by society to be one of the biggest environmental problems. This article presents an assessment of a new traffic noise algorithm. The presented expert survey on noise energy reduction allows choosing the most appropriate method for reducing noise energy in Via Baltica transport logistics corridor. Based on the expert survey, a hierarchical table for noise energy reduction was compiled. It will allow assessing the validity of individual noise energy reduction solutions. It has become relevant for improving infrastructure of other transport corridors and choosing the most appropriate solutions to reduce vehicle noise pollution. A further application of this model can be focused on economic evaluation, forecasting of expected benefits and so on.

Cross-Sectional Survey of the Training Practices of Racing Greyhounds in New Zealand

The aim of this study was to conduct a cross-sectional survey of racing greyhound trainers in New Zealand in order to provide an overview of their training practices. A survey regarding training practices was posted to all registered greyhound training license holders in New Zealand in August 2019. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 48 trainers (35.6%; n = 48/137) who completed the survey. Other than the differences in the number of greyhounds in race training, the training programmes described by public trainers and owner trainers were similar. Trainers reported that the primary reason for registering young dogs for racing and for qualifying for racing was the ability to meet time milestones. Young dogs had a median of six (interquartile range (IQR): 4-10) trials before they commenced their racing career. Trainers described training practices that aimed to prepare greyhounds for race-day. Regardless of whether the dogs raced once or twice a week, most training programmes demonstrated high specificity where training involved two periods of load cycles through high-intensity workload. Trainers racing their greyhounds once a week simulated the workload of trainers racing their greyhounds twice a week by introducing one high-intensity (speed) workout during the week. Training programmes were structured to condition the dogs to the physiological and metabolic requirements of sprint racing. This study highlights the importance of the need for an improved understanding of training and competition load in order to enable future research in the field of racing greyhounds.