Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinarett welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the UK's number one leading veterinary podcast. I'm very pleased and delighted to tell you today that we've got Carrie Westgarth on the line. Carrie is a lecturer at Liverpool University where she lectures on animal welfare and the human-animal bond.
We're gonna be talking today about dog bites, so before we crack on with that. Carrie, do you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself before we start? Yeah, I can do, thank you very much.
So yeah, I started in a, zoology, genetics, animal behaviour background, and then moved into dog training and animal behaviour work. I was an assistant dog trainer for a while and I also worked in an animal rescue centre for a while. And then I came into research and did a PhD and trained in veterinary epidemiology and human public health and has built a research portfolio from there all around the pets that we live with, mainly dogs, and why we live with them, what we do with them, how that impacts them, how they impact us.
And then I also teach the veterinary undergraduate students, in this area. And you know, as we were saying that human animal bond is so important and a lot of the time that goes really well, but unfortunately we do see episodes where animals have to be, you know, destroyed because of biting or sent back to a rescue centre, and of course, you know, bites can be as. Not severe as, you know, a little scratch up to unfortunately, I know we've had some deaths this year as well.
You're obviously doing a lot of research around dog bites and, I know to start it'd be really fascinating to hear about your virtual dog. We were talking about it before we, we came onto the podcast. We obviously did a virtual dog for anatomy as part of Hollowett, that was Sheba the German Shepherd dog, but tell us a bit about Dave.
So yeah, Dave is a Labrador, so we went for quite a common generic breed that people would think would be quite friendly. And Dave stands for dog assisted virtual Environment, which I think is probably the greatest creative moment of my career so far to come up with that. .
So yeah, he's a, he's a virtual reality dog. Unfortunately a lot of the virtual reality work we had planned got turned into kind of virtual, but not quite virtual reality because of COVID, because we couldn't do face to face research. But we.
Have piloted him as face to face as well as used him in more online video formats as well for research purposes. So basically, he, is in the, in the corner of a room, or he's in the corner of a park. You can choose between the two environments.
And he's standing there, and as you approach him. His behaviour changes. And so he basically moves through what we would call the ladder of aggression through some of those moves, .
Lifting his paw up, turning his head away, doing yawning, licking his lips, moving backwards, until the point, if you go right up close to him and try to touch him, he will lunge and bite you. And we designed this for numerous reasons. We wanted a, we want a safe environment where we can test how people react to an aggressive dog, so it's safe for the people and it's safe for the dogs.
No dogs are being harmed in the process of this research. But B, could it be used as an intervention? For training people about body language of dogs when they're feeling unsure and worried, and then see, could it possibly used as an intervention for people who have phobias of dogs to be able to be in a controlled virtual environment around a virtual dog as well.
So it's in the very early stages we're doing pilot research at the at this this point, you know, exploring how people react. To him, but it, we, we are hoping for more funding in this area and, and there's been fantastic work done by James Oxley, my PhD student, and, and it was his idea in the first place, and, so really proud of that work he's been, he's been doing. And it's brilliant that we're seeing more and more work done, which is very much evidence based cos of course.
You know, obviously I, I, I'm a vet and I have a, a, a feeling that I'm fairly intuitive around dogs and and thankfully, you know, didn't receive any sort of serious injuries while I was practising. But of course the danger with intuition is it's obviously not nearly as as . As important as sort of evidence-based stuff, and we can end up with the myths that get into the literature because somebody writes about it who's reasonably authoritative and suddenly everybody talks about it.
Do you think there are myths that need to be dispelled within this area of, of, perhaps. Wisdom that's been passed down that is actually incorrect. There are lots of myths around dog bites and dog bite prevention, I think .
And some of them are actually around, they're not just common to to dog bites, they're common myths around injury prevention. So they're they're common ways we perceive our risk of injury, and that are nothing to do with, with dogs, but we apply them to the dog situation as well. But it's, it's kind of complicated even further by the dog situation because they're not just an object that may harm us, they're.
An animal with our own relationship with that animal. So it's almost like another person. So, but there are lots of myths.
So for example, That it wouldn't happen to me. So we all think, you know, you know, but dogs like me and I wouldn't get bitten. Or this dog wouldn't bite me because he knows me and he and he likes me, or my dog wouldn't bite anyone.
It's, it's other people's dogs that bite people. And actually none of that. Is, is true, lots of, you know, everybody thinks my dog wouldn't bite someone until their dog bites someone and everybody thinks, oh, I'm not gonna get bitten, I know what I'm doing until they get bitten, so try not to fall into, Into that trap, for sure.
The other thing we do a lot is victim blaming. So, you know, when someone has a car crash, we think, well they must have been driving stupidly, er, for example, and with dogs, we tend to say well somebody did something wrong, the child jumped on the dog for . The postal worker frightens the dog, all, all sorts of things, and I see this when I interview dog bite victims, you know, they'll quotes like in every bite time I've ever been bitten, I've been to blame.
I could have done something differently. And although you know, in hindsight, it's easy to think that. Interestingly, that woman was one who's, she was walking a friend's dog that she was looking after and that dog saw another dog and kicked off and was on the lead and.
Redirected, basically, just turned and bit her leg rather than obviously couldn't get to what he wanted. And I actually think it's quite hard in that situation to be doing anything different than standing there with the dog on, on the lead. So it's so interesting that she thought that that was her fault.
. It's also a bit embarrassing because if that's a relationship, you know, I had an uncle and aunt who, the dog you would walk in and it would just bark and bark and if it got the chance it would try and bite you, well. That was clearly, you know, a dog that needed to be managed better and differently, and I wasn't doing anything wrong, I was just really inhabiting its space, and maybe I shouldn't have inhabited its space, in fact, funnily enough, I used to inhabit its space less and less cos I went less because. It wasn't fun going, so this ends up where people become isolated, don't they, because nobody wants to come to the house because they've got a nutty dog in the house.
Yeah. And we did a survey of dog bite victims and about 35% of the dog bites occurred when someone was trying to interact with the dog in some way, but all of the others, they weren't actually really necessarily interacting with the dog. Sometimes they don't even know the dog is there.
It just runs up behind them and bites them. So that idea that it, it's a natural instinct to to want to think about what was happening during that very last moment before the bite occurred, but actually in terms of injury prevention, what measures could be put in way, way before that moment of that interaction even in order to make sure that that bite didn't occur. So for example, you know, we spoke earlier about the use of muzzles.
That's something that if the dog was muzzle chained and was happy wearing a muzzle. Before you even get to a situation where you're interacting with that dog, you have prevented that, that dog bite, not around the way you're actually interacting with it. So it's kind of thinking a bit more widely than thinking what did the victim do to cause this dog to bite them.
Which is just a very, very narrow part of how we prevent dog bites from happening. And I suppose also even somebody who's had a dog for 10 years and suddenly that dog bites, that may be due to, for example, the dog has a sore hip or it's becoming slightly senile, it can then act out of character because the person has touched it in a certain place that it's uncomfortable with. Absolutely, and unfortunately vets are on the very sharp end of this, because a lot of animals are being brought in in, in pain.
Certainly when I'm looking through, context of dog bites to children, quite a lot of them, it will note that the dog is fairly elderly now and has never done anything like this before. And the, the dog, was lying there and the person tripped or something and fell on them, or even just, you know, gently brushed past them and they're more reactive. In that sense, and Daniel Mills at the University of Lincoln has done some fantastic, work, and he, around sort of pain and behaviour, and, and talking to him, he reckons that pretty much every behaviour problem he sees has some element of pain somewhere in the history.
So I think this is. Vastly underestimated and certainly when I had my own child and an elderly dog when I had my child was a toddler, our dog was quite elderly at the time, and I was just aware that as much as she liked him, if she was just asleep and he accidentally fell on her. That was not gonna end, end well, and that wouldn't have been.
Anyone's fault but mine, really. And I think this is where veterinary advice is very important that . You know, young children, anybody sort of under 7 or 8 really can't be left with a dog on their own because even a small dog can deliver, you know, a, a, a life changing injury to her face or whatever, can't they?
It can, and we've seen fatalities with very small breeds. We certainly see lots of very life changing injuries, especially to children with very small breeds, very common breeds, a breeds that you wouldn't think so. French bulldogs, shih-tzus, pugs, cockapoos, they are, they are all in this data.
So yes, just because you think your dog is quite small and and perhaps, isn't there for so much of a risk, it's just, it's just not worth it. Hm. The webinar vet has been serving the veterinary community with CPD for over a decade, but did you know we offer so much more than just that?
Our sister company Sympathy Vets have veterinary jobs all in one place. We serve the full veterinary team, providing permanent and locum roles in practise, whilst also providing a simple and transparent solution to IR 35 where needed. We also care about the environment.
That's why we plant trees for every one of our practise members. To find out more, please visit Simply vets.com today.
Talking about dog breeds, do, do you see in your research that there's certain types of dogs that are much more likely to bite? So, we did a systematic review of the literature. And we found no consistent evidence of breed effects.
So even when there were studies that had found that some breeds were more at risk of being aggressive than others and aggressive behaviour, they the studies didn't agree with each other, so there was across the studies. There was no consistency with it within that. Having said that, I think there is a difference between The risk of being aggressive, we know any dog can be aggressive in in the right situation, you could push any dog to be aggressive, especially if it's in pain.
But then there possibly is a difference as to how much damage it could do. When it's aggressive, which is another tenet of of of injury prevention is trying to limit the damage that occurs. So for example, seat belts on cars, they don't stop us getting into accidents, but they limit an airbags, that's another example, they limit the damage that can occur when an accident does happen.
So yes, if you have a larger powerful energetic dog. Perhaps we do need to be even more careful. The only consistent finding that we found in the literature was around genetics and heritability.
So I'm not talking about. Yes, there were some studies, in cocker spaniels, but, but, but the studies would just happen to be in those breeds. So we're not talking about there being a high risk of certain breeds.
But within lines within breeds. So, so it's so important then that you are looking at the temperament of the lines of the dam and the sire, and of the puppies that, that you're getting because although we think, oh, I'm a great owner and I'll do all the. Right things and I can fix this dog.
Actually, but what you get, you can't change the genetics of it. You can't change that genetic history. And so that is so important.
And we did a study with the Association of Pet behaviour counsellors, whom I'm a member of. We did a case control study with our members and we found that if parents, so if owners hadn't seen the parents of the puppy compared to if they had, if they hadn't seen both parents, they were 4 times more likely to have behaviour problems later on. And if they hadn't seen, one parent compared to seeing both parents, they, they were 2.5.
Times more likely. So basically seeing one parent is kind of good, but seeing both is, is much better in terms of, in terms of that, and that links back I think to that. That genetic tendencies that which is really hard because this person when they come in and they've got a dog that's aggressive, you know, you can't rewind time and say, well, 10 years ago, where did you get this dog from and what were the genetics and temperament of the parents.
But I think as a society, this idea, there's no such thing as a bad dog, just a bad owner. Actually, you need to source a good dog in the first place as well. Well I know this was the American cocker spaniels, I don't know if names have been changed and things, but I remember meeting a few of these red cockers with rage syndrome and, you know, whatever you did.
They were just angry dogs. Yeah, there's been a lot of controversy over the rage thing, and I don't know that we ever got to the bottom of it. Certainly we're seeing problems, I'm seeing reported problems with cockapoos now.
But again, I think it's certain lines, or also coming from certain breeding establishments, in terms of behaviourists I know that are working with, with clients and having, yeah, really young puppies that are coming into your classes, they're young puppies and they're already showing. Signs of aggression, and that is really, really quite worrying because by that point the owner's not even had them long in order to have done anything to cause this. No.
It's interesting that you say it is lines because of course I also know some really nice red cocker spaniels. But you know, they, they seem to have something that was not right and you know, as you say, it's possibly just a line, well it probably is just a line thing. But there was a lot of misdiagnosis as well.
There was a lot of, I think at the time there was a then, you know, once things catch on, it was then. Yeah, it's rage and it's like, no, it's a. It's a dog that's become really frightened of the person handling it because they cut it nail quick or something like that.
Yeah. They always look for the simpler explanation as well. Yes.
Well, I know, Mike Willard, who I always quote from a famous gastroenterologists in America, he said, Everything I taught you 10 years ago was a lie. So seeing as I haven't practised for a little bit, I always preface things in case I'm a bit behind the curve on those. .
Finally, you know, perhaps some tips for veterinary surgeons and nurses, you know, we're handling dogs a lot, are the things that in your research you've seen that vets and nurses have done that. And you know, not wanting to victimise and say it's the victim's fault, but things that perhaps they have done that we shouldn't be doing, and how can we correct those, so perhaps 2 or 3 tips to finish. I think firstly Make yourself very behaviorally aware in terms of what are those signs that a dog is looking stressed and worried about a situation.
It can be can be subtle. There are lots of great training courses, even YouTube clips people have made about these things, and we can all learn, learn more, but hopefully you're fairly experienced, . With dogs and I mean and a lot of this stuff's not necessarily taught in great depth in vet school training or or wasn't in the past.
The other thing is learning low stress handling techniques. I think a lot of the traditional handling techniques or the techniques that we've just got used to doing because that's the way. It's just easy to do it, can actually be a bit overwhelming for some dogs.
So is there anything you can improve in terms of, you know, leaning over the dog, how much the dog is being restrained and things? If you are, have any concerns whatsoever, get a muzzle on, safety, safety first, get someone who's really good at restraint, . As well, so a lot of vets get caught out and vet students get caught out when dogs are coming round from anaesthetics.
They get their let their guards down, and maybe put their face in too close, at this point and the dog can suddenly move. So we see that quite a bit in the data, . Yeah, quite a few things.
I think you know, one of the things I was always very keen on was having a nurse hold the dog rather than an owner because owners. Don't always hold that well. They can let go and things, so, .
It's a one that. It is difficult because is that gonna stress the dog out more? .
Keep the owner in sight, you know, so that the, the dog was seeing the owner, but perhaps if I didn't really trust the owner, then I felt better to trust the nurse. Yeah, yeah. The other thing to think about, finally just to mention, is this idea of, I think when we're working with animals a lot, I've done a lot of jobs with animals and daily looking after animals in kennels and things.
We can, we do learn an intuition about how things are happening, what we're observing, and we may not always be conscious of that intuition, but something tells us something's a bit off, which can be really helpful. But also. We come That intuition can let us down by making us a bit too complacent and trusting at times, in particular, if we've known a dog for a long time or we've dealt with a lot of dogs that look and behaving like that dog right now.
And this idea again of coming back to it's not gonna happen to me or that dog's the, that dog's not gonna bite. It's never bitten before. And even, so my, my PhD student Sara, she worked a lot in, in shelters and, with ve interviewing veterinary professionals, and she found that, even when a dog's behaving in a way that actually is showing that.
It's maybe not happy in this situation because it's never hurt us before, or we, we know that dog quite well, we can be a bit too, too trusting with that. And just keep your wits about you. How is this happening right now?
Because this is a different day and this dog could react differently this day than it has, has before. Cos it's social relationships we have with this animal, we do build up its trust with them, which is lovely, but that can let us down, when it comes to being on our wits about the potential for a dog bite to occur. Carrie, that's been really brilliant.
I think it's such an important area. The work that you're doing is fantastic, so please carry on doing that. I think it's really important also, cause I can't remember ever having a lecture about dog bikes at university, so the fact that we're beginning to talk about that to the students is fantastic.
So thank you so much for your time and thanks everyone for listening. This has been better chat. Great to see you and hopefully see you on a podcast or a webinar very soon.
Bye bye.
