Recently I posted about "How to Critique a Scientific Paper" part one.
To recap and add a few points, when we are assessing for a decrease in welfare, we look at the Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare, which include (and are not limited to) Freedom from pain and Freedom from fear and distress.
Let's look at the first line of the title.
As I mentioned previously 2 out of the 8 dogs were removed from the study because the number of shocks were too high to meet Animal Ethics based on the IACUC standards (that is > 20 shocks), so the efficacy of training first starts off at 75% (6/8 dogs were trained).
Then through the test trials their were deems to have a 67% efficacy.
Therefore, you take 75% x 67% which is just over 50% efficacy to train AND maintain the behaviours of stopping chasing.
To conclude, that is 50% of dogs will effectively be trained AND maintained on the electronic shock collar to stop chasing behaviours.
I looked at the last part of the title previously, but to recap...
Comparison of the ... Welfare of Different Training Methods in Stopping Chasing Behavior in Dogs
As mentioned, good welfare is Freedom from pain, fear and distress.
Cortisol is not a good measure of poor welfare, as it increases in times of high arousal, excitement including chasing behaviours. As mentioned previously, fecal levels of cortisol are not accurate measures of any acute increase.
Therefore, the only measurable means of poor welfare that this study has is the behaviour. Yelping is a vocalization that is emitted by a dog that is either startled, pain or fearful and may be a sign of distress.
The Kruskal–Wallis tests indicated statistically significant differences across the groups for yelping, H (2) = 7.14, p = 0.03. Post hoc analysis using Dunn’s procedure for pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni corrections showed that Group A yelped significantly more than Group B, p = 0.02.
Thus, if yelping behaviour signals decreased welfare, and the electronic shock collars cause an increase in yelping, then the Group that was shocked has evidence of poorer welfare.
Recently a dog trainer with Happy Hounds posted an analysis of the paper on YouTube.
We're going to review this paper as a group of veterinarians training in veterinary behaviour this week.
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