The relationships between motor lateralization, salivary cortisol concentrations and behavior in dogs

Lateralized Functions in the Dog Brain

“…This may suggest the existence of a lateralized component in that particular type of aggressive response but further investigations are required. Moreover, recent findings show that behavioural signs of fear and distress displayed in a given situation and motor laterality are not associated with cortisol concentration in saliva samples [42].…”

“…There is now a growing body of literature on motor lateralization in dogs, focused mainly on behavioural lateralization in the form of forelimb preferential use. In recent studies, paw preference has been assessed using several tasks: removal of a adhesive plaster from the eye [17,37] or of a piece of tape from the nose [38][39][40][41][42], removal of a blanket from the head [43], retrieval of food [44,45] from a toy object (namely the "Kong", see Figure 2) [46][47][48][49][50] or a metal can [43], paw-shaking [43], first foot placed forward to depart from a standing or sitting position [49,51] or during a run [52] and stabilization of a ball [39] and hindlimb raising behaviour during urination [53]. The existence of motor asymmetries at a population level is currently a subject of wide debate.…”

Urinary posture and motor laterality in dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) at two shelters

“…Our second method of assessing population laterality is more commonly used in studies of laterality in dogs (e.g., Batt et al, 2009;McGreevy et al, 2010;Poyser et al, 2006). We calculated a laterality index for each dog with more than 10 urinations involving a raised hindlimb.…”

“…Most commonly, laterality has been measured for paw preference during non-walking activities. Almost all of these studies have focused on forelimb behaviors, such as the paw used to remove a piece of adhesive tape from the nose (Batt et al, 2008;Batt et al, 2009;Quaranta et al, 2004), hold either a rawhide chew (Poyser et al, 2006) or Kong toy (Batt et al, 2008;Batt et al, 2009;Branson and Rogers, 2006;Tompkins et al, 2010a), and the paw given when asked to shake hands (Wells, 2003). Some studies report no overall population bias (McGreevy et al, 2010;Poyser et al, 2006) but others found population lateralization in opposite directions for males and females, with male dogs predominantly left-pawed and female dogs predominantly right-pawed (Quaranta et al, 2004;Wells, 2003).…”

A test for the evaluation of emotional reactivity in Labrador retrievers used for explosives detection

“…Other studies have shown plasma cortisol levels to be useful measures of the physiologic response of working dogs to environmental challenges (Haverbeke et al, 2008), fear provocation (Hydbring-Sandberg et al, 2004), stress (Beerda et al, 1999), and enrichment (Lefebvre et al, 2009). Similarly, elevated salivary cortisol has been shown to be associated with fearfulness in temperament tests in retrievers (Batt et al, 2009) and in response to different types of fearful stimuli (Beerda et al, 1998). We collected both salivary and plasma cortisol samples as baseline, 1 week before, and immediately after the ERT to determine if the test produced stimulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary axis, indicative of emotional challenges (Haverbeke et al, 2008).…”