A modified version of the Ainsworth Strange Situation Test was used to analyse 40 dog–owner\ud pairs in order to assess whether owners can represent a secure base for their dogs. The Wilcoxon\ud test revealed significant differences between owner and stranger for protest at separation (whining),\ud contact maintenance effect (proximity, attention seeking and physical contact) and secure base\ud effect (exploration, individual play and social play). The results suggest that dogs behave similarly\ud to children towards the mothers and to chimpanzees towards human caretakers in the Ainsworth\ud Strange Situation Test: owners are the preferred recipient of affiliative behaviours and, in their\ud absence, dogs show behaviours indicative of distress. After reunion with the owner, dogs show\ud an increase in social behaviours towards him/her. Dogs did not show fear of the stranger, and it\ud was regarded as a normal behaviour for adult well-socialized dogs. Until now whether owners\ud represented a secure base for their dogs was debated, due to controversial results. This study found\ud that dogs play and explore more when owners were present, suggesting that owners can represent\ud a secure base for their dogs. Therefore, according to Bowlby’s definition, dogs are linked to their\ud owners by an attachment bond

Veterinary visits are known to be stressful for many dogs. The aim of this study was to assess dog welfare in the waiting room of the veterinary clinic through a multi-modal, non-invasive approach. Forty-five dogs were each videoed for 3 min in the waiting room of a veterinary clinic where they went for a scheduled visit. The welfare of each dog was assessed using a thorough video analysis and two overall evaluations (low, medium and high stress); one performed by a veterinary behaviourist and one by the dog's owner. Two-thirds of dogs spent more than 20% of the time displaying at least one indicator of stress, and 53.3% showed four or more behavioural signs of stress. Assessments of stress by the behaviourist indicated that level of stress in the waiting room was high in 28.9% of cases. The agreement between owners' and behaviourist's overall evaluations was quite low. The behaviourist's evaluations were strongly correlated with the time spent by dogs showing signs of stress and moderately correlated with the number of displayed signs, whilst owners' evaluations were not closely correlated to those factors. Dogs rated as highly stressed by the behaviourist were more prone to display resistance (halting, refusing to budge) when moving from the waiting room to the consultation room. The results of this pilot study support the idea that the welfare of dogs in the veterinary waiting room is often impaired, and that owners are unable to accurately assess stress in their dogs in such situations

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The aim of this study was to quantitatively assess the kind of transport dogs undergo, the behaviours displayed during transport, the prevalence of travel-related problems in dogs and owners' interventions to solve these problems. A convenience sample of 907 dog owners completed a questionnaire containing 16 multiple-choice questions. All dogs had been transported by car at least once, but 4.7 per cent were no longer transported. 76.2 per cent of animals always responded positively to car transport, the rest showing or having shown problems (6.7 per cent always reacted negatively). Dogs were found to be more excited than inhibited during car transport. The vast majority (86.0 per cent) had become used to travelling by car as puppies; this made them less likely to develop problems (6.3 per cent v 24.1 per cent; χ(2)=19.886, P=0.000). If dogs were transported only to veterinary clinics, they were more prone to respond negatively to car transport (46.4 per cent v 22.7 per cent; χ(2)=7.245, P=0.007). For dogs reported as problematic (23.8 per cent of the sample), 96.3 per cent of the owners did not administer any treatments or other substances, 48.7 per cent did not seek any advice, and 40.4 per cent of them made attempts to solve the problem by themselves

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