Assessment of veterinarian interaction styles and the effect on dog reactions during two routine vet procedures

Abstract

The first aim of this study was to quantify veterinarian-dog interaction styles during a routine vet consult. Since petting and using comfort talk are known to be comforting to dogs, these parameters were used to determine if different veterinarians used different interaction styles towards dogs. The hypothesis was that the amount of petting and comfort talk directed at the dogs would differ among the veterinarians involved in this study. The results showed that the amount of petting and using comfort talk indeed differs between veterinarians, but the differences in the amount of petting seem to be clearer than in the amount of comfort talk. The second aim of the study was to determine if the veterinarian interaction style had an effect on dogs’ behavioural responses to two routine vet procedures; giving an injection and taking the rectal body temperature. The hypothesis was that the veterinarian interaction style would affect the dogs’ behavioural responses during the two routine procedures. Dogs examined by a veterinarian with a high petting or high comfort talk interaction style would exhibit lower duration or frequencies of behavioural indicators of ‘stress’ pre- and post-vaccination and pre-, during- and post-temperature than dogs who were examined by vets with a low petting or low comfort talk interaction style. The results suggest that this was true for some behaviours, however for other behaviours it seemed that dogs couldn’t cope with the situation very well. The clearest difference was with hiding with the owner; this was much more common with dogs that were high petted, compared to low petted dogs. In the future, for all 37 dogs the amount of petting and comfort talk should be determined, instead of using three dogs per veterinarian and assume that the amount of petting will be the same for the other dogs. Furthermore, the study should include more veterinarians, but especially more dogs per veterinarian have to be included in this study.