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If your dog has had any illnesses or ailments, you can tell us about them at any time without having to complete the rest of the questionnaire. Simply login to your dog's profile by visiting www.dogslife.ac.uk and click on the link underneath your dog's graph.
Does your Labrador like water (more than you!)?
Don’t ignore your dog’s eyelashes
Yet more findings from the Dogslife study!
Prize winners!
Does your Labrador like water (more than you!)?
Many Labrador Retrievers (but not all) like to swim, and a recent study has looked at a small cohort of Labrador Retrievers to find out how much they like interacting with water. In particular, they tried to find out if dogs would choose interacting with water in a pool over interacting with a person or another dog. Finding out a dog’s preference ensures that they have access to what they enjoy.
Ten Labrador Retrievers (between 2 -13 years of age) took part in the study. All ten dogs came from a farm in Portugal where they were living in kennels in groups of 2-3. The dogs socialised together, and sometimes they were able to use a swimming pool. The owners said that two of the dogs were not interested in the pool, two enjoyed swimming, and the others were somewhere in between.
The experiment was set up so that dogs could choose between the water to swim in, another dog to interact with, or a human they could approach. The human was in an area which was closed off so the dog could not access them, but they were visible. The person was someone that the dog had seen on one occasion before, and that person spent one minute looking at one of the dogs, and one minute looking at the other dog.
The trial was conducted on three separate occasions and each dog was observed for six minutes in total over the three trials. The trials were also video recorded so that researchers could see how long the dogs spent with the other dog, the person, or interacting with the water.
The study found that dogs preferred to interact with the water as they spent more time doing this than interacting with the other dog, or the person. However, because the person in the trials was not physically accessible to the dog (and their gaze was fixed rather than responsive), it may have put the dog off trying to interact with them. On that basis, it was not possible to say that dogs prefer water to humans.
During the trials, all the dogs approached the water, but they interacted with it in different ways. For example, six dogs touched the water with their muzzle, five dogs immersed their front legs in the water, four dogs swam in the water, and one dog pawed at the water. These different interactions with the water may imply that dogs have individual preferences with how they like to play in water.
The study has suggested that because many dogs enjoy the water, it may be beneficial to the welfare of the dogs that like it to have the opportunity to access it, although it must be remembered that the study was very small and the dogs’ lifestyles may be different to that of many dogs living in the UK. To find out more about this study, please click here.
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Don’t ignore your dog’s eyelashes
Eyelashes are the hairs that grow at the edge of the eyelid. They protect the eye by physically preventing foreign material like dust getting into the eye and are sensitive to being touched (which causes the eyes to blink). You may never have paid too much attention to your dog’s eyelashes, but they have an important function in protecting the eye, and just like everything else in the body, sometimes they develop problems.
There are a few eyelash related conditions which dogs can get, some of which we have already seen reported in the Dogslife cohort. Sometimes an extra eyelash can grow out of the inner lining of the eyelid, rather than on the outer edge where they normally occur, which are called ectopic cilia. These hairs then rub directly on the surface of the eyeball which causes pain. Extra eyelashes can also grow out of the glands on the inner edge of the eyelid, which also causes them to rub on the eyeball, which is called distichiasis. Occasionally eyelashes can grow from their normal position on the eyelid but in an abnormal direction so that the hair contacts the eyeball; this is called trichiasis. Finally, there is a condition where part of the eyelid is folded over, which causes the lashes to touch the eyeball; this is called entropion.
With each of these conditions, the clinical signs are caused by irritation of the surface of the eye. These clinical signs include pain, reddening of the eye, ulceration of the surface of the eye, excessive tear production, and squinting of the eye. A veterinarian may be able to diagnose the condition by directly looking at the eye and eyelids, although sometimes evaluation may require magnification to see the abnormalities as the hairs are so small, and a specific test to look at the integrity of the surface of the eye (the cornea) may be required. For ectopic cilia, distichiasis or trichiasis which are causing a problem (which they don’t always do) the offending hair must be removed, including the follicle at its base where it grows from, to prevent it from returning. This may require surgery, or treatment with an electrical or freezing device. Entropion can normally be treated by removing a flap of skin to rotate the eyelid edge outwards to prevent the hairs from touching the eyeball. If the surface of the eyeball is scratched this may also require treatment. In most cases these conditions can be treated quickly and effectively, although the problems can sometimes recur.
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Yet more findings from the Dogslife study!
If you haven’t read the full version of the paper containing our findings from the study so far (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167587715002329) then here are a few more of the results you might be interested to know about. For example, we found that on average Dogslife dogs were reported to be doing just over two and a half hours of exercise each day (as recorded by the questionnaire), and as they got older they did more exercise.
When we looked at what factors affected the amount of time dogs spent exercising, we observed that dogs spent less time doing exercise in the winter (as you might have predicted, as presumably this reflects the shortening in daylight hours and colder weather). Dogs in families did very slightly less exercise than dogs in households containing only non-retired adult(s) (again this is what we might have predicted, as perhaps families have less time to spend doing exercise). Where dogs were reported to have a problem which stopped them doing exercise, they spent much less time exercising. Similarly, if owners had a problem themselves or were restricted in the amount of time were able to take their dog for exercise, then their dog spent less time exercising. And most interestingly of all, on average dogs in Scotland and Wales spend very slightly more time exercising than dogs in England. We don’t really have a good explanation for this finding!
When looking at these results it is important to remember that this does not necessarily mean that dogs had less activity. For example, one dog may have spent less time exercising each day than another, but the exercise they did may have been more vigorous (such as fetching and retrieving compared to walking on a lead). When we looked at the average rate at which dogs gained weight in comparison to the total amount of time they spent exercising, the total time they spent exercising did not influence how much weight they gained. However the amount of time they spent fetching, chasing and retrieving was associated with a decrease in their weight gain (that is to say, dogs spending more time fetching, chasing and retrieving gained less weight).
Unfortunately, we can’t yet tell you how much exercise a dog should do to keep them fit and healthy; our results suggest it is quite a complex interplay between the duration and type of activity, but they do highlight that the owners of Labradors in the UK do spend a lot of time exercising their dogs, which has to be good for both parties involved!
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Prize winners!
Congratulations to our September prize winners! The following Dogslife members have each won £10 of Pets at Home vouchers: Mrs S from Cheshire, Mr R from Northamptonshire, Ms H from Staffordshire, Mrs B from Fife, Mrs T from Leicestershire, Ms P from Nottinghamshire, Mrs B from Northamptonshire, Mrs C from Nottinghamshire, Mr T from South Gloucestershire, Mr M from Merseyside. Enjoy spending the vouchers on your pets!
Don’t worry if you haven’t won a prize this time, by keeping your dog’s record up to date, you will automatically be entered into the next prize draw which takes place in three months’ time.
Thank you to everyone who continues to support the Dogslife project, we are very grateful for all your time and help with the study.
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Don't forget to come back to www.dogslife.ac.uk to update your dog's record!
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