An Evaluation of Respondent Conditioning Procedures to Decrease Barking in an Animal Shelter

Abstract

HIGHLIGHTS• Many animals relinquished to shelters are relinquished due to problem behavior.• A common problem behavior in dog shelters is barking.• Researchers tested the effectiveness of a simple respondent conditioning procedure in order to reduce the noise level of barking in a dog shelter.

Reducing barking in a Brazilian animal shelter: A practical intervention

“…While we did find that our intervention reduced sound levels in the shelter building and dogs spent less time barking, we did not directly explore which components of the intervention produced the observed results. Certainly, our results align with those from prior studies (Protopopova & Wynne, 2015;Payne & Assemi, 2017;Pengilly, 2020;Zurlinden et al, 2022) in which food was used to decrease barking, but it is also possible that habituation could have played a role in our observed results. Dogs have been shown to habituate to a novel noise within 1-6 trials (Martin et al, 1976).…”

“…Our study adds to a handful of previous studies that have attempted to modify the barking behavior of dogs in shelters and kennels (Protopopova & Wynne, 2015;Payne & Assemi, 2017;Pengilly, 2020;Zurlinden et al, 2022). However, to our knowledge, this publication is the first to examine dogs' ability to generalize a non-barking response to other individuals beyond the study's experimenter as well as use multiple measures to evaluate intervention efficacy.…”

“…Research by Scheifele and colleagues (2012) found that exposure to kennel noise over a six-month period resulted in hearing loss for the dogs. Peak sound pressure levels (peak decibel value over the measuring period in a linear curve) tend to be low and constant overnight but can increase in the early morning and vary according to shelter routines (Payne & Assemi, 2017).…”

“…Protopopova and Wynne (2015) demonstrated that interventions using either classical or operant conditioning can reduce undesirable in-kennel behaviors, such as barking. Payne and Assemi (2017) observed that daily pairings of a door chime with food reduced kennel noise by 15 dB. Often in these studies, the experimenter was the sole individual paired with food, and whether dogs can generalize this behavior to the presence of staff members or members of the public remains to be evaluated.…”

Treinamento e interação humano-cão têm efeito sobre o bem-estar e a adoção em cães de abrigos?

“…O barulho do latido irrita e pode ser prejudicial não somente para os cães, mas para os humanos também (Protopopova & Wynne, 2015) e pode afetar a decisão de adoção. Latidos inadequados consistiram em 35% das reclamações dos proprietários nos Estados Unidos da América (EUA) (Yin & McCowan, 2004) e é um problema, uma vez que os cães devolvidos aos abrigos têm menos probabilidade de serem adotados novamente (Payen & Assemi, 2017;Salman et al, 2000).…”