This week I’m off to The Pet Professional Guild Homeward bound summit, to talk about frustration in shelter dogs, so frustration is going to be SSB theme of the week
Questionnaire based Psychometric tools have been developed for assessing behavioural and emotional traits in animals, one of these questionnaires looks at frustration in dogs. Frustration is a negative emotion seen when an expectation hasn’t been met. Frustration plays a key role in certain behaviour problems, including aggressive behaviours, but is often difficult to separate from other emotional motivations.
This study looked to develop a questionnaire that can be used to assess frustration in dogs. And online survey was sent out to owners, coving training and behavioural histories of dogs and completion of a questionnaire containing 33 items related to frustration. 2348 people responded to the study, and 273 of these were asked to repeat the questionnaire again 6 weeks later and then again, a year later.
Comparing the results 22 of the questions were deemed reliable enough to be used in the final questionnaire, and there was a significant correlation between the questionnaire data and the owner’s perception of the dogs frustrated tendencies
The Canine Frustration Questionnaire—Development of a New Psychometric Tool for Measuring Frustration in Domestic Dogs (Canis familiaris) (McPeake et al., 2019) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6535675/
Frustration is a negative emotional state implicated in a range of canine behaviour problems. The Canine Frustration Questionnaire (CFQ) is the first questionnaire that assesses frustration tendencies in dogs based on owner report.
This study developed several behaviour tests, to induce frustration in dogs, mapping onto the CFQ. Forty-four dogs were recruited and filmed whilst undertaking the tests, and a CFQ was completed by each owner. the dog’s behaviour was then assessed and saliva samples were taken pre and post testing, to measure cortisol levels for identifying arousal. A range of predicted behaviours (e.g., vocalising and lunging) positively correlated with CFQ scores. For 22 dogs’ cortisol levels positively correlated with the CFQ PC5 ‘Frustration coping’ score.
These results provide further evidence of the validity of frustration tendencies as measured by owner report through the CFQ.
Behavioural and Physiological Correlates of the Canine Frustration Questionnaire (McPeake et al., 2021) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8698056/
https://ipstore.lincoln.ac.uk/…/canine-frustration…