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Canine Welfare Science: An Antidote to Sentiment and Myth

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Domestic Dog Cognition and Behavior

Abstract

Our understanding of the welfare of companion animals is both incomplete and fragmentary. For domestic dogs, most research has focused on animals that do not have stable relationships with people, such as dogs in laboratories and rehoming kennels. The welfare of pet dogs has received limited attention, presumably due to an assumption that owners have their best interests at heart. However, owners' conceptions of their companion's needs can be inconsistent or even contradictory. Dogs are, on the one hand, sentimentalised via anthropomorphic interpretations, but on the other, mythologized as the descendants of savage wolves requiring harsh correction before they will conform to the demands of living alongside people. Canine welfare science attempts to replace such mythos with objective norms that have proved effective when applied to other domesticated species. However, animal welfare science is rarely value-free or unambiguous, since it has variously been defined in terms of physical health, psychological well-being, and the freedom to perform ‘natural’ behaviour. Here we attempt to strike a balance between each of these approaches while addressing a wide variety of current issues in canine welfare, including: concerns arising from the breeding of pedigree dogs; inappropriate training methods; and the widespread occurrence of behavioural disorders. We finish by describing some barriers to improvement in dog welfare, including owners’ anthropomorphisms, the challenges of finding reliable indicators of well-being, and the effects of applying erroneous conceptual frameworks to the dog-owner relationship.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, UK trainer Charlie Clarricoates, who stated "We are seeing dogs now who are spoiled rotten, and never have any discipline, mainly because owners are force-fed incorrect impractical information…This moralistic attitude that you can only train dogs by loving them and being kind is ridiculous. There are some dogs you can’t do this with because it doesn’t work, even if you have a year with them" (McHugh 2009).

  2. 2.

    See, e.g., http://www.rawfoodvets.com/articles/article7.

  3. 3.

    E.g., http://www.rawfeddogs.org/.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr Sam Gaines (RSPCA) and Dr Corinna Clark for very useful comments on the draft. We also thank our colleagues Dr Rachel Casey and Dr Emily Blackwell for many valuable discussions on canine welfare science.

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  1. Anthrozoology Institute, Animal Welfare and Behaviour Group, School of Veterinary Science, University of Bristol, Langford, Bristol, BS40 5DU, UK

    Nicola Rooney & John Bradshaw

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  1. Nicola Rooney
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Correspondence to Nicola Rooney .

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  1. Department of Psychology, Columbia University Barnard College, New York, New York, USA

    Alexandra Horowitz

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Rooney, N., Bradshaw, J. (2014). Canine Welfare Science: An Antidote to Sentiment and Myth. In: Horowitz, A. (eds) Domestic Dog Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-53994-7_11

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