The welfare of pet rabbits is an area of growing interest in Europe and the UK. This study analyses questionnaire results from a diverse population of 1254 rabbit owners from three different geographical areas in England with the aim of providing an accurate representation of how pet rabbits are currently housed and cared for and key aspects of their health and welfare.

Previous studies have suggested that some pet dogs respond to their owners’ hypoglycaemic state. Here, we show that trained glycaemia alert dogs placed with clients living with diabetes afford significant improvements to owner well-being. We investigated whether trained dogs reliably respond to their owners’ hypoglycaemic state, and whether owners experience facilitated tightened glycaemic control, and wider psychosocial benefits. Since obtaining their dog, all seventeen clients studied reported positive effects including reduced paramedic call outs, decreased unconscious episodes and improved independence. Owner-recorded data showed that dogs alerted their owners, with significant, though variable, accuracy at times of low and high blood sugar. Eight out of the ten dogs (for which owners provided adequate records) responded consistently more often when their owner’s blood sugars were reported to be outside, than within, target range. Comparison of nine clients’ routine records showed significant overall change after obtaining their dogs, with seven clients recording a significantly higher proportion of routine tests within target range after obtaining a dog. HbA1C showed a small, non significant reduction after dog allocation. Based on owner-reported data we have shown, for the first time, that trained detection dogs perform above chance level. This study points to the potential value of alert dogs, for increasing glycaemic control, client independence and consequent quality of life and even reducing the costs of long-term health care.

Vets, animal welfare charities, and researchers have frequently cited educating owners as a necessity for improving the welfare of companion dogs. The assumption that improving an owner’s knowledge through an education intervention subsequently results in improvements in the welfare of the dog appears reasonable. However, the complexity of dog welfare and dog ownership and the context in which these relationships occur is rapidly changing. Psychology has demonstrated that humans are complex, with values, attitudes, and beliefs influencing our behaviours as much as knowledge and understanding. Equally, the context in which we individuals and our dogs live is rapidly changing and responding to evolving societal and cultural norms. Therefore, we seek to understand education’s effectiveness as an approach to improving welfare through exploring and understanding these complexities, in conjunction with the relevant research from the disciplines of science education and communication. We argue that well designed and rigorously evaluated education interventions can play a part in the challenge of improving welfare, but that these may have limited scope, and welfare scientists could further consider extending cross-disciplinary, cross-boundary working, and research in order to improve the welfare of companion dogs.

• Large populations of dogs are housed in kennels at some point in their lives. • Kennelling can negatively affect canine welfare, yet there are no standard measures. • Popular animal-based measures have benefits but also significant limitations. • Newly emerging welfare indicators may prove practical and valuable. • Research should focus on validating comprehensive welfare assessment for kennelled dogs.

Dogs are ubiquitous in human society and attempts to manage their populations are common to most countries. Managing dog populations is achieved through a range of interventions to suit the dog population dynamics and dog ownership characteristics of the location, with a number of potential impacts or goals in mind. Impact assessment provides the opportunity for interventions to identify areas of inefficiencies for improvement and build evidence of positive change. This scoping review collates 26 studies that have assessed the impacts of dog population management interventions. It reports the use of 29 indicators of change under 8 categories of impact and describes variation in the methods used to measure these indicators. The relatively few published examples of impact assessment in dog population management suggest this field is in its infancy; however this review highlights those notable exceptions. By describing those indicators and methods of measurement that have been reported thus far, and apparent barriers to efficient assessment, this review aims to support and direct future impact assessment.

Domestic dogs are trained to a wide variety of roles including an increasing number of medical assistance tasks. Glycaemia alert dogs are reported to greatly improve the quality of life of owners living with Type 1 diabetes. Research into their value is currently sparse, on small numbers of dogs and provides conflicting results. In this study we assess the reliability of a large number of trained glycaemic alert dogs at responding to hypo- and hyper-glycaemic (referred to as out-of-range, OOR) episodes, and explore factors associated with variations in their performance. Routine owner records were used to assess the sensitivity and specificity of each of 27 dogs, trained by a single UK charity during almost 4000 out-of-range episodes. Sensitivity and positive predictive values are compared to demographic factors and instructors’ ratings of the dog, owner and partnership. Dogs varied in their performance, with median sensitivity to out-of-range episodes at 70% (25^th percentile = 50, 75^th percentile = 95). To hypoglycaemic episodes the median sensitivity was 83% (66–94%) while to hyperglyaemic episodes it was 67% (17–91%). The median positive predictive value (PPV) was 81% (68–94%), i.e. on average 81% of alerts occurred when glucose levels were out of target range. For four dogs, PPV was 100%. Individual characteristics of the dog, the partnership and the household were significantly associated with performance (e.g., whether the dog was previously a pet, when it was trained, whether its partner was an adult or child). The large sample shows that the individual performance of dogs is variable, but overall their sensitivity and specificity to OOR episodes are better than previous studies suggest. Results show that optimal performance of glycaemic alert dogs depends not only on good initial and ongoing training, but also careful selection of dogs for the conditions in which they will be working.