Driving evidence‐based improvements for the UK's ‘Stressed. Lonely. Overweight. Bored. Aggressive. Misunderstood…but loved’ companion animals

Abstract

Background: The Five Welfare Needs in UK animal welfare legislation underpin a legal duty of care and are an animal welfare assessment framework. Health and welfare problems arise when these needs are unmet. The veterinary professions work with others to address these problems, but there is no publicly funded U.K. companion animal welfare surveillance to identify priorities, or promote and monitor change. Methods: The veterinary charity, the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA), together with the market research organisation, YouGov, has undertaken a longitudinal nationwide survey, assessing whether the U.K.'s pet dogs, cats and rabbits are having their Five Welfare Needs met. Data from nationally representative samples of pet-owning adults, drawn from YouGov's online survey panel, have been used to produce the PDSA Animal Wellbeing (PAW) Report annually since 2011. Results: Examples are given of how the PAW Report has been used to monitor trends in animal welfare problems, drive collaborative behaviour change campaigns, create evidence-based funding applications and inspire innovation in veterinary practice. Conclusion:The PAW Report has contributed to closing a gap in national companion animal welfare surveillance. When governments rely on nongovernmental organisations to assist with animal welfare surveillance, reliable sources such as the PAW Report can inform research, policy and legislation.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Owner demographic factors are associated with suitable pet rabbit housing provision in the United Kingdom

“…Data came from the collaboration between the PDSA and the market research organisation YouGov (http://yougov.co.uk) in the form of the annual PDSA Animal Wellbeing (PAW) report. This nationwide survey repeated yearly aims to assess whether the UK's pet dogs, cats and rabbits were having their five welfare needs met by questioning owners on the acquisition, health, behaviour, companionship, diet and environment of their pet 33 . The responses of 1333 UK rabbit owners aged 18 years and above were collected through an online survey conducted between 23 February and 6 March 2017 ( n = 263), 9 and 19 January 2018 ( n = 483), and 7 January and 5 February 2019 ( n = 587) using YouGov's active sampling panel methodology 34 .…”

“…YouGov set demographic quotas to ensure that the sample was representative of the overall UK population of pet owners for that species, relative to owner age, gender and geographical region. To calculate demographic quotas, YouGov used separate sampling of UK adults ( n = 10,000) from their online panel and data from the Office for National Statistics to determine the incidence and demographic breakdown of UK pet ownership by species 33 …”

“…This nationwide survey repeated yearly aims to assess whether the UK's pet dogs, cats and rabbits were having their five welfare needs met by questioning owners on the acquisition, health, behaviour, companionship, diet and environment of their pet. 33 The responses of 1333 UK rabbit owners aged 18 years and above were collected through an online survey conducted between 23 February and 6 March 2017 (n = 263), 9 and 19 January 2018 (n = 483), and 7 January and 5 February 2019 (n = 587) using YouGov's active sampling panel methodology. 34 A subset of questions from these surveys were used in the current data analysis as relevant to the topic.…”

“…To calculate demographic quotas, YouGov used separate sampling of UK adults (n = 10,000) from their online panel and data from the Office for National Statistics to determine the incidence and demographic breakdown of UK pet ownership by species. 33 Most of the work involved in producing a representative sample of pet owners is done at the sampling stage (as described above). However, if there were any small imbalances in the final samples when compared to the demographic quotas, these were corrected for by providing proportional weighting.…”

Cat population calculations

“…We look forward to continuing to contribute to the Canine and Feline Sector Group's work to further understand pet populations and pet acquisition and will continue to closely monitor this area in future PAW Reports. The PAW Report methodology, including for pet population estimates, is published in the online report 1 and in the accompanying peer‐reviewed research paper 2 …”