Shelter Behavior Analysis Flashcards
1
Q
What are the statistics and demographics of dogs relinquished to shelters?
A
- Between 5 months and 2 years of age
- Have not received proper vet care
- Sick or injured
- Intact
- Outdoor vs Indoor
- Untrained
2
Q
What are the statistics and demographics of cats relinquished to shelters?
A
- Under 3 years of age
- Have not received proper vet care
- Intact
- Allowed outside
3
Q
What is the shelter environment like?
A
- Huge variability
- Animals experience high levels o stress
- Sources: new smells and sounds, different food, isolation, mixed-species areas, slippery floors, minimal soft substrates, vet exams
- Animals are living in an environment that they have no control over (learned helplessness)
- Limited structure and predictability
- Constant stress ⇣ animal health and ⇡ problem behaviors
- ⇡ euthanasia rates
4
Q
What are the unique challenges animals face in the shelter environment?
A
- Overcrowding
- Constant introduction of new, unknown animals into the group
- Open access and accountability to the public
- Constant scrutiny from the media, the public, etc
- Inadequate healthcare programs
- Mandatory holding periods
- Limited resources
- Inadequate staff and volunteer training and high turnover
- Aging, poorly designed facilities
- Admission of species other than dogs and cats
5
Q
How can the shelter environment be improved?
A
- Enrichment
- ⇡ behavioral choices for animals
- allow them to express species-appropriate behaviors and abilities
- exploratory and foraging behavior ⇡ public perception of adoptability
- Toys (novelty is important)
- Social, environmental, sensory…. in or outside of cage
- Can add or remove something to enrich environment
- Remove visual stimuli, add audio or sensory enrichment
- Individual preferences
- Tailor to personality type
- exploratory and foraging behavior ⇡ public perception of adoptability
6
Q
What are the types of Shelter Behavior Analysis?
A
- Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire (C-BARQ)
- SAFER (Safety Assessment for Evaluating Rehoming)
- Assess-A-Pet
- Feline Spectrum Assessment (FSA)
- Feline-ality
- Meet your Match
- Dog-Dog assessment
- Food/resource guarding
7
Q
What i the Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionaire (C-BARQ)?
A
- Behavior screening tool for dogs relinquished to animals shelters (100 questions)
- Aggression and fear directed towards humans and other dogs correlated between relinquishing owner and independent subjective assessments
8
Q
What is the SAFER assessment?
A
- Safety Assessment for Evaluating Rehoming
- Tool used to assess dog aggression
- False-positive rate: 50%
- unable to identify dogs with moderate aggression that could potentially be addressed with behavior modification
9
Q
What is Assess-A-Pet?
A
- Temperament test
- False-positive rate: 41%
- Failed to predict lunging, growling, snapping, barking and/or biting that occurred in 71.2% of dogs after adoption
10
Q
What is FSA?
A
- Feline Spectrum Assessment
- Used to assess how social (or likelihood of being social) a cat is
- Used to make decisions in a shelter environment
- Touch
- hand on cage and cracking the cage door
- Interactive toy
- touch with wand
11
Q
What is Feline-ality?
A
- Developed to provide adopters with accurate information about an adult cat’s future behavior in the home
- Was predictive of feline behavior post-adoption
12
Q
What is the Meet Your Match program
A
- By the ASPCA
- Identifies adopters rather than the animals
- Cat adopters:
- Green adopters: most successful with cats who adapt quickly to new situations
- Orange adopters: good fit with easy-going cats
- Purple adopter: comfortable with cats who need time and encouragement to adjust to new surroundings
- Dog adopters:
- Green adopters: most successful with dogs who like to be physically and mentally engaged
- Orange adopters: good fit with middle-of-the-road dogs who are responsive and like regular activity and interaction
- Purple adopters: are comfortable with dogs who have a laid back attitude and enjoy an easygoing lifestyle
13
Q
What is the dog-dog assessment?
A
- Use of fake dog during behavior evaluation was not predictive of fearfulness and aggression towards live dogs
14
Q
What is Food/Resource Guarding?
A
- Test are consistently unreliable at predicting behavior outside of a shelter setting
- Many shelters euthanize or restrict adoption of dogs that exhibit food guarding in an animal shelter, as dogs are labelled as being aggressive
- Most adopters with food aggressive dogs did not consider it a challenge to keeping the dog as a pet
- Food guarding - return rate 5%
- 9% for dogs not identified with guarding behavior
15
Q
Does a Shelter Behavior Analysis actually work?
A
- Do behavior assessments in a shelter predict the behavior of dogs post-adoption
- friendly/social, fear, anxiousness
- Aggression, food guarding, separation-related behaviors
- No better than flipping a coin
- Lack of evidence of reliability and validity of canine behavior evaluation in the literature
- Inaccurately label animal temperament or ability to live with other animals, kids
- ⇣ adoption or ⇡ adoption + ⇡ return rate if expectations & reality of animal behavior does not match
- Dangerous
- Used to make life-and-death decisions
- Flip-side: shelters down-playing dogs with aggressive behaviors to increase adoption rates
