Tag Archives: shelters

02/6/12

Environmental Enrichment and Stress

Just read an absolutely fascinating study called “Enriched environment experience overcomes learning deficits and depressive-like behaviour induced by juvenile stress“, that Dr Sophia Yin made reference to recently on Facebook. It’s an absolutely fascinating read, especially after writing about the over-emphasis of socialisation just days ago. I almost have to eat my words… Almost…

Rat Yawning - Do rats yawn in stress like dogs?

Dogs yawn when they’re stressed – I don’t know if rats do, too, but this study used biochemistry to measure rat-stress.

 

Basics of the Study

This study used rats to investigate the role of stress on adult behaviour (particularly surrounding anxiety and depression).  Two groups of rats were stress during their juvenile period (27-29 days) through ‘forced swimming’, elevation, and restraint. (A third group of rats was used as a control.)  One group of the ‘stressed’ rats was given environmental enrichment, by enhancing their cage environments with toys, shapes, colours, and allowing them activities outside of their cage.  The other groups did not receive environmental enrichment.

The Findings

In short: Environmental enrichment seemed to ‘neutralise’ the anxiety experienced by the stressed rats, and sometimes reduced their anxiety further than rats with no stressful incidents and no environmental enrichment.

In long: Continue reading →

01/16/11

Kenneling Rescue Dogs

Please note that this is an old post and some of my ideas have changed since it was originally published. I leave it up for historical purposes.

Recently, I came across “Minimum Health Requirements for Shelters”. I had the pleasure of working in an animal shelter that did meet most of these standards, and were close to meeting the remaining. This was a big shelter and had many resources, both financially and in terms of staff and volunteers.

However, I believe that my shelter was exception in this regard – many shelters do not provide an enriched and healthy kennel environment. The Animal Welfare Act calls for food, water, and shelter, and all kennels I know meet these standards, but we all know that animal welfare is a lot more than these essentials. Because of the complexity of animal welfare, the practice of kenneling dogs has been brought into dispute.

This post looks to examine how the lack of resources often means that rescues cannot meet these minimum health requirements, and that they ultimately have to make difficult decisions regarding the fate of their animals due to their lack of resources. Additionally, it will look at why many rescues kennel dogs, and the problems associated with long term kenneling. Alternatives to kenneling will also be considered. Continue reading →