The New Era of Canine Science: Reshaping Our Relationships With Dogs

Abstract

Canine science is rapidly maturing into an interdisciplinary and highly impactful field with great potential for both basic and translational research. The articles in this Frontiers Research Topic, Our Canine Connection: The History, Benefits and Future of Human-Dog Interactions, arise from two meetings sponsored by the Wallis Annenberg PetSpace Leadership Institute, which convened experts from diverse areas of canine science to assess the state of the field and challenges and opportunities for its future. In this final Perspective paper, we identify a set of overarching themes that will be critical for a productive and sustainable future in canine science. We explore the roles of dog welfare, science communication, and research funding, with an emphasis on developing approaches that benefit people and dogs, alike.

The Animal Welfare Science of Working Dogs: Current Perspectives on Recent Advances and Future Directions

“…Although the past couple of decades have seen great progress in assessing the welfare of working dogs (7,12), there continues to be a disparity in how these services are valued and evaluated from both the human and animal perspectives. It is evident that in the early years, even with good intentions, most of our expectations emphasized the value of these services for humans, overshadowing the impact of the work on the animals themselves (29). Today, we are seeing a stronger trend to assure reciprocal assessments on both sides of the service partnership.…”

“…They are just engaged, with consent assumed. Although, it seems today that more attention is given to ascertain if the animal seems comfortable in their position, there continues to be a lag in objectively assessing the welfare of working dogs (29).…”

“…Scientific information needs to be readily accessible to compete with other information reaching working dog industry stakeholders (29). Meaningful engagement and improved community outreach by researchers are needed to improve the uptake of research findings into evidence-based best practice.…”

“…The deficit model has been shown to be less effective than alternative bi-directional communication approaches that draw on the social sciences, such as participatory and community-based dialogue approaches (159,161). This is particularly true in morally contentious areas such as the care and welfare of working dogs (29). When consulted, working dog industry workers have told the authors that scientists were not asking the questions they believed to be most important to industry (135).…”

“…Concern has been expressed that animal welfare science has focused on optimizing performance and productivity of animals for the benefit of humans, rather than understanding the lived experience, needs and interests of animals [(26, 27)]. This may reflect the economic motivations tied to the sources of research funding [ (27)(28)(29)]. For some industries, it could be perceived that scientific input is engaged with an exploitative motivation, rather than protective, with little focus to increase understanding, empathy and compassion toward animals [ (25,27,30)].…”