Pinpointing the subtle behaviours dogs may exhibit when they are feeling unwell is the driving force behind newly published research from the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC).

The study involved observing the behaviour of 12 mature, female beagles in a controlled environment. The dogs were fed a mix of three diets, with some of the food contaminated with Fusarium mycotoxin. Produced by mould, the toxin is sometimes found in cereal-based pet food and can cause a variety of ailments when eaten, including digestive upset and diarrhea.

“The behaviour of an animal is one of the best ways to assess their welfare,” says lead author, Michael Brunt, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in OVC’s department of population medicine and researcher in The Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare.

Per the study, researchers then individually released the dogs into the centre aisle of a housing room for four minutes per day and observed their interactions with familiar dogs in adjacent kennels.

It was found the total number of “interactions, orientation, and attempted physical contact” with other dogs was less frequent among those that had consumed mycotoxins as compared to dogs that had eaten uncontaminated food.

The findings, Dr. Brunt explains, will, ideally, lead to the development of tools to better identify behaviour cues present when a dog is unwell. This, he explains, will ultimately improve animal welfare.

“With this study,” he says, “we were able to pinpoint what some of [these behaviour] changes are, such as wanting to interact with other dogs less or not seeking out social interactions with other dogs.”

“This is an opportunity to look at precision technologies and develop machine learning algorithms that could pick up those subtle changes in behaviour in a lab setting,” Brunt continues, adding that this, in turn, could help identify subclinical illness before it compromises a dog’s welfare.

He adds that further research, looking at dogs of different breeds in a variety of environments, is needed.

Findings of the study, which was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, have been published in the Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science. For more, click here.