The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates that 5 to 7 million pets are admitted to shelters each year, with approximately 60% of admitted dogs ultimately euthanized. Raw data and all codes generated in Stata for data analysis can be accessed in DRYAD ( DOI: 10.5061/dryad.5n7p9).įunding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. Received: SeptemAccepted: NovemPublished: December 31, 2014Ĭopyright: © 2014 Protopopova et al. PLoS ONE 9(12):Įditor: Peter James Hansen, University of Florida, United States of America These findings will allow shelters to focus behavioral modification efforts only on behaviors likely to influence adopters' choices.Ĭitation: Protopopova A, Mehrkam LR, Boggess MM, Wynne CDL (2014) In-Kennel Behavior Predicts Length of Stay in Shelter Dogs. No consistent behavioral changes were observed due to time spent at the shelter. When combinations of behaviors were assessed, back and forth motion was found to predict a longer stay (increased by 24 days). When accounting for morphological preference, three behaviors were found to have a significant effect on length of stay in all dogs: leaning or rubbing on the enclosure wall (increased median length of stay by 30 days), facing away from the front of the enclosure (increased by 15 days), and standing (increased by 7 days). No theoretically significant differences in behavior were observed between the two different dog morphologies. Morphologically preferred dogs were small, long coated, ratters, herders, and lap dogs. To account for adopter preference for morphology, dogs were divided into “morphologically preferred” and “non-preferred” groups. Dogs behaved more attentively to active observers. To account for differences in adopter behavior, experimenters varied from solitary passive observers to pairs of interactive observers. A sample of 289 dogs was videotaped for 1 min daily throughout their stay at a county shelter. The aim of the present study was to determine whether any behaviors that dogs exhibit spontaneously in the presence of potential adopters were associated with the dogs' length of stay in the shelter. However, no systematic data are available to indicate that the spontaneous behavior of shelter dogs has an effect on adopter preference. Previous empirical evaluations of training programs aimed at improving dog adoption rates assume that dogs exhibiting certain behaviors are more adoptable.
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