Meyer, Forkman, Fredholm, et al. (2022), on Pet Dog Welfare

Iben Meyer, Bjorn Forkman, Merete Fredholm, Carmen Glanville, Bernt Guldbrandtsen, Eliza Ruiz Izaguirre, Clare Palmer, Peter Sandøe, “Pampered Pets or Poor Bastards? The Welfare of Dogs Kept as Companion Animals.” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 251: 105640, June 2022. 

• In the past, human interactions with dogs were primarily with free-roaming "village" dogs. This article employs the lives of modern village dogs as a standard against which to consider the welfare of companion dogs.

• Village dogs tend to have a high pup mortality rate and a relatively low life expectancy of 3-to-4 years. (Companion dogs live, on average for more than 10 years (page 5).) Nevertheless, village dogs are rather healthy and well-adapted to village life. 

• Pet owners generally control the amount and nature of social activities for their dogs. 

• Pet dogs often are considered to be family members. They typically receive shelter, adequate food, and health care.

• Pet dogs often suffer from separation anxiety, and also often spend considerable time alone. (The pandemic tended to reduce or eliminate alone-time, and the end of the pandemic introduced separation for dogs with little or no prior experience of it.)

• Pet dogs are expected to behave well when socializing with other dogs, though the owners generally decide the (limited) extent and nature of socialization; crucially, unlike village dogs, sometimes exiting the situation is not an available strategy for a pet dog. Aggression towards other dogs seems to appear more frequently with pet dogs than with village dogs. This dog-on-dog can lead to dogs being put down, so it is a serious welfare issue for pet dogs (page 3).

• Pet owners often expect an unrealistically high tolerance from their dogs for some forms of social interactions, such as hugging; further, owners might not notice signs that their dog is perturbed by the interaction, and aggression might be the eventual result.

• "Ultimately, few dogs embody the ‘ideal’ companion dog that can both tolerate social isolation for many hours a day and meet the high expectations of social interaction with the family and unfamiliar dogs [p. 3]." Again, the result can be the sundering of the pet relationship, and possibly the death of the dog. Better informed owners with more appropriate expectations could help reduce this problem. 

• Modern dog breeding only dates to the Victorian era. Breeding has brought some serious welfare issues. Canine physical characteristics popular with humans, such as flat faces and skin folds, can be detrimental to the health of dogs.

• Limited gene pools (inbreeding) can also lead to welfare problems, so ensuring a wide gene pool (for example, by not having just a handful of male dogs as sires) can help dogs.