In-Kennel Behavior Predicts Length of Stay in Shelter Dogs Essay

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The article “In-Kennel Behavior Predicts Length of Stay in Shelter Dogs” by Alexandra Prototpopova, Lindsay Renee Mehram, May Meredity Boggess, and Clive David Lawrence Wynne observes the issues related to dog adoption from shelters. The focus of researchers’ interest is to determine whether there exist certain behaviors in the dogs that may affect people’s desire to adopt them. The main finding of the article is that there are three types of behavior that tend to increase dogs’ stay at the shelter: (1) leaning on the enclosure wall; (2) facing away from the observer; and (3) standing (Protopopova, Mehrkam, Boggess, & Wynne, 2014). This finding has major implications to modification of dogs’ behavior to influence adopters’ desire to take them home. The following paper aims to summarize the given article and make the conclusions on its strong and weak points.

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The article addressed the results of the research study conducted by its authors. This study aimed to investigate the influence of dogs’ behavior on adopters’ decision to take them from the shelter. The participants of the study were 289 dogs with the morphological features both appealing and not appealing to potential adopters. They were videotaped to produce short videos of each dog’s behavior. The process took one minute for each dog during one day. The sample was chosen on the random basis. Dogs were seen by different observers, both having active interest in dogs and not having such interest. Observers were solitary and coming with other observers.

The results of this research indicated that dogs tend to behave more actively when observers demonstrate their enthusiasm for them, as well as the same dogs demonstrate the less active behavior when the viewers demonstrate no interest. These findings were fully consistent with the initial hypothesis stating that the dog’s behavior is conditioned by the interest of the observant.

Primarily, the results of the study are of high significance for the dogs’ shelters managers. Since they are interested in finding responsible and motivated new owners for their dogs, the shelter managers will want to study their target population along with their preferences and expectations. Then, their best interest is to help dogs “present” themselves in the more appealing way to the future owners. However, the researchers have not found the answer on what the manager can do in particular. Their future research objective is to find out the answer to this question. The findings of the article also implement to the people who come for a dog to the shelter because they demonstrate that the dog’s behavior is most probably just the reflection of the visitor’s enthusiasm, but it is not the actual representation of the dog’s character and inner features (Protopopova et al., 2014).

In conclusion, the article “In-Kennel Behavior Predicts Length of Stay in Shelter Dogs” provides important insights into the matters related to dogs’ adoption from shelters. The main finding of this article is that dogs’ and observers’ behavior are interrelated and if the visitor is enthusiastic about the dog, it will demonstrate the lively behavior in response. The strong points of this research is that it has addressed the dogs with the morphological features both appealing and not appealing to the observers and indicated that the dog’s behavior is still more important for adoption than the looks. The weak point of this research is the lack of the recommendations towards the practical implementation of its findings.

Reference

Protopopova, A., Mehrkam, L. R., Boggess, M. M., & Wynne, C. D. (2014). PLoS One, 9(12). Web.

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IvyPanda. (2020) 'In-Kennel Behavior Predicts Length of Stay in Shelter Dogs'. 10 May.

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IvyPanda. 2020. "In-Kennel Behavior Predicts Length of Stay in Shelter Dogs." May 10, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/in-kennel-behavior-predicts-length-of-stay-in-shelter-dogs/.

1. IvyPanda. "In-Kennel Behavior Predicts Length of Stay in Shelter Dogs." May 10, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/in-kennel-behavior-predicts-length-of-stay-in-shelter-dogs/.


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IvyPanda. "In-Kennel Behavior Predicts Length of Stay in Shelter Dogs." May 10, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/in-kennel-behavior-predicts-length-of-stay-in-shelter-dogs/.

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