06/09/2022
REHABILITATING FEARFUL DOGS
A new paper by Collins et al. (2022) analysed the effectiveness of behavioural rehabilitation programs for helping dogs in shelters experiencing extreme fearfulness reach the behavioural standard for adoption.
This is a lovely and encouraging paper because the majority of dogs displaying extreme fearfulness (86%) did respond to the rehabilitation interventions and were able to be put up for adoption. Behaviour modification techniques included socialisation with people, leash application and walking, handling, and exposure to novelty.
Additionally, the dogs were provided with environmental enrichment activities four times per day and were prescribed psychopharmacological medication (primarily fluoxetine and gabapentin however this was done on a case by case basis).
This is good evidence for the efficacy of many traditional first line behaviour modification techniques employed by behaviourists as they seem to be supportive to the majority of dogs.
It is also worth mentioning that on average, this took 96 days. This really reinforces the fact that although behaviour modification is very successful, it is not a quick fix, and requires commitment and patience from owners. To truly overcome fearful behaviour, a lot of time is required.
We also need to consider the 14% of dogs that did not reach the threshold for adoption. Little is known about the factors that may predict a lack of success with these individuals. However, it does raise questions about what more we can do to support dogs that do not respond to traditional methods of behavioural modification.
There may be more treatments yet to be discovered and tested that can support these dogs. This is something we often speak about at ABK, and hopefully in the future we will have more answers about what we can do to help them.
There are a few limitations to this study that it is important to acknowledge, firstly there was no control group. This just means, there was no group of dogs that did not receive the treatment to which the outcomes of the dogs in rehabilitation compared, so it is hard to tell how much improvement was a direct result of the behaviour modification.
Furthermore, post-adoption research was limited, with less than half of the owners responding to post-adoption surveys, so it is not clear how long lasting these changes were. Some of the dogs may have regressed when they moved into a new setting where the training style and environment differed.
Reference:
Collins, K., Miller, K., Zverina, L., Patterson-Kane, E., Cussen, V., & Reid, P. (2022). Behavioral rehabilitation of extremely fearful dogs: Report on the efficacy of a treatment protocol. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 254, 105689.
