No abstract

It is widely recognised that for vertebrate species, personalities vary along an axis with extremes represented by ‘proactive’ and ‘reactive‘ individuals. The aim of this study was to verify whether there is a relationship between personality and disease vulnerability in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) exposed to an intensely stressful situation such as entering a shelter. Twenty-eight shelter dogs participated in the study. The ethogram consisted of approximately 100 behavioural patterns. Behavioural observations of dogs in their new environment, a Novel Object and a T-maze test were used to evaluate the personality of the dogs captured as strays and entering the shelter. A blood sample from each dog was obtained at admission into the shelter and after a month to evaluate their immunological state. Based on PCA analyses of observational combined with experimental data, the dogs were ordered along the boldness-shyness axis, with the first being the boldest. Excluding one (the 6th), the first 10 dogs showed an improved health status: absence of disease symptoms during the 30 days of monitoring and improved immunological parameters; the opposite was found for shy dogs. The results of this research seem to confirm findings in other vertebrate species, i.e., bold and shy dog vulnerability to diseases might be different, especially when they must cope with a stressful and highly infectious environment such as a dog shelter.

The management of free-roaming dog populations is an important matter both for the local administrations that have to manage this problem and for the defenders of the animals’ rights. This review’s first objective is to analyse the legal status of the free-roaming dogs in some European countries. A second purpose of this work is to ask questions and to consider the ethical aspects of the already-existing strategies to control free-roaming dog populations. Italian Law no. 281, which was enacted in 1991, was intended to solve the problem of free-roaming dogs in Italy; at the same time, apparently in contradiction with this objective, the law called for a no-kill policy to be enforced throughout the whole national territory. Thus, for a dog that has no chances of adoption, the ethical debate has moved to the question of whether a “life imprisonment” is better than the “capital punishment”. In terms of ethical aspects of control strategies of free-roaming dog populations, we believe that the Italian national law, and its regional applications, are more functional than the other laws of Westernized countries, with the appropriate measures suggested and with a more accurate control on their application.