COMPARISON OF SOCIO-COGNITIVE SKILLS AMONG ASSISTED THERAPY DOGS AND PET DOGS.

BARRERA G.; BENTOSELA M,; DZIK M.; FAGNANI, J; CAVALLI C.

Congreso; 5th Canine Science Forum; 2016

Animal Assisted Therapies involve spontaneous and unregulated visits, where the dog interacts with the patient. The goal is for the patient to benefit from this positive interaction. Despite how promising these interventions may seem, there are few studies of effectiveness and socio-cognitive profiles of these dogs. We aimed to compare the performance of pet dogs and assisted therapy dogs in several socio-cognitive tasks, so as to detect the most relevant areas for the achievement of this work. For that purpose, we evaluated eight dogs participating in assisted activities in a palliative care service and an acute psychotic patients service, and a control group of seven pet dogs which lived in the same family houses of the aforementioned group, but do not participate in the assisted activities. We administered a test battery in a counterbalanced order across dogs: sociability to a stranger, learning to gaze at the human face when reinforcement is inaccessible, A-not-B task and DIAS questionnaire. The results showed that, compared to pet dogs, assisted therapy dogs gaze more at people faces, both in the baseline and in the extinction phase when they do not longer receive reinforcement. No differences were observed in the other tests. These results suggest that persistence of communicative responses is essential for dogs to perform assistance activities, so it should be stimulated through specific training.