The Finnish version of the HCPI provided a valid, reliable, and responsive tool for assessment of response to treatment in dogs with osteoarthritis.

Chronic pain could be assessed in dogs with CHD through completion of the study questionnaire by a person familiar with the pet (eg, owner) after receiving appropriate education in its use. Eleven variables were identified as being potentially useful in assessment of chronic pain in dogs.

SignificanceUrban, Westernized populations suffer extensively from noncommunicable diseases such as allergies. However, the overlapping effects of living environment and lifestyle are difficult to separate. Intriguingly, also our fellow animals, dogs, suffer from analogous diseases. Therefore, we suggest that pet dogs, sharing their environment and lifestyle with humans but having a comparatively simple life, provide a valuable model for understanding origins of noncommunicable diseases. We show that living environment and lifestyle concurrently, but still independently, shape both the skin microbiota and the risk of allergic disease in dogs. Urbanized lifestyle, featuring restricted animal contacts and small family size, is allergy promoting both in rural and urban dogs. Hence, both environment and lifestyle seem to influence the microbiota and, probably consequently, immune tolerance.

Although valid and reliable, the pain VAS was a poor tool for untrained owners because of poor face validity (ie, owners could not recognize their dogs' behavior as signs of pain). Only after owners had seen pain diminish and then return (after starting and discontinuing NSAID use) did the VAS have face validity.

Conformation and body weight have a significant influence on force platform values and this may cause bias when study results are compared.