Good evening everybody and welcome to this webinar on this Wednesday evening. My name is Bruce Stevenson and I have the honour and privilege of chairing tonight's webinar, which is very proudly sponsored and brought to you by Bought by Many. So a huge big thank you to Bought by Many for their sponsorship, which allows us to open this up to as many people as we can get in, which is absolutely fantastic.

Little bit of housekeeping if you do have any questions for our speaker, just move your mouse over the screen. A little control bar, normally a little black bar pops up at the bottom. You'll see a Q&A box there.

Just click on that, type in your questions. They'll come through to me and we'll just hold those over to the end. A reminder, this is the first of a three-part series.

So Sarah tells me that part one and part two is all about dogs, and part 3 is about cats. So if you have got questions about cats and everything else, we will defer those more than likely over to part 3. So questions into the Q&A box and we will handle those at the end.

Tonight's speaker is more than aptly qualified to talk to us about behaviour because Sarah spent 4 years in mixed general practise before setting up a behavioural referral veterinary practise in 1992. She is an RCVS and European veterinary specialist in behavioural medicine and was made a fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 2018. In 2019, she gained her postgrad certificates in veterinary education and became a fellow of the Higher Education Authority.

She's a certified clinical animal behaviourist, is registered as a veterinary behaviourist with the Animal behaviour and Training Council. In 2002, Sarah became a founding diplomat of the European College of Animal Welfare and behavioural Medicine. And has a special interest in the interplay between emotional and physical illness in dogs and cats, particularly in the role of pain.

Sarah lectures extensively on behavioural medicine and is an author and co-author, as well as an editor of several books. Sarah, welcome back to the webinar vet and it's over to you. Thank you very much indeed, Bruce, and good evening everybody.

I hope you're all well and that you've had a good day at work and I think it's really hard to get to evening webinars, so I admire you, for being here this evening. So we're gonna be talking tonight about pandemic puppies and thinking about what is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of those puppies, the puppies that were born, reared and acquired during the pandemic. So.

If we start thinking then about pandemic puppies in the UK, we know that the phenomenon of the increase in the puppy population started really soon after the onset of the first lockdown. So the media started reporting really high numbers of people acquiring puppies, and this figure of 225% increase in the number of inquiries about puppies made to the Kennel Club. Was in April to May 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, so, the first official lockdown of course in the UK started on March 23rd, 2020.

So in April, May, we were already seeing this phenomenal increase in the number of inquiries about puppies. And so we have these sorts of headlines, the pandemic's sparking a puppy craze. 3.2 million pets being bought during lockdown, a phenomenal increase in pet, caregiving.

And it wasn't just the UK. It was a worldwide phenomenon. If we looked at Google searches for adoptable dogs, then those, increased significantly compared to 2019 during this period.

And it, it, those were worldwide searches, as well as in this, paper, separated out to USA and worldwide searches. And in terms of the impact of this surging demand, we had an availability crisis. So, the number of puppies available obviously dropped as people were demanding more and more of them, and because of the laws of supply and demand, we had this price hike, and about 62% increase in price of puppies in the early part of the pandemic was being reported.

And so, these are the sorts of headlines. That we were seeing at that time. And in the UK, pandemic puppies were then found to be more likely to cost greater than 2000 pounds, than those that have been purchased in 2019.

Now, that comes from, Rowena Packer's work, and I, I want to credit Rowena, and her team. I'm gonna refer to their work a lot during tonight's presentation. I want to thank Rowena as well for, her contact with me during the preparation of this presentation as well.

So this pandemic puppy study that Rowena's team at the RBC are conducting has shown that 24.3% of pandemic puppy caregivers were paying between 2 and 30 for their puppy, compared to only 1.8% of 2019 puppy caregivers paying that price.

So the price increase was quite phenomenal. And what is the impact of that? Well, we start getting a risk of increased unsuitable breeding.

So this demand needs to be met, and it's actually in people's interest to meet that demand with those sorts of prices. And so there was an increase in breeding, from, you know, quarters that would never have considered breeding. I think we had another potential problem of the fact that obviously people, who may not have ever considered, breeding with their, their pet, were now at home and felt they had all this time on their hands, and that maybe having a litter would be a good idea, especially when there was such a financial incentive to do so.

And of course that. That was looking just at the price of puppies that could be sold. We do know, that reputable, breeders also have very high costs as well.

So, it isn't all about the price of the puppy, but I think if people are not experienced in the world of breeding, they probably look at that price and, and think of that as pure profit, and think that this is a very quick buck to be made. The other thing that happened very sadly, and hasn't gone away, is an increase in dog theft. So, this, tendency to look for young, potentially entire dogs as well.

And we're Still getting reports of increased incidents of attempted dog thefts and dog thefts, and also of abandoning of, of stolen dogs once they have realised that they're either castrated or spayed, so they're, they're of no use to them. And so, with these are sort of lots of impacts coming from the fact that dog demand was increasing so rapidly. So why, why were people taking on these puppies at this time?

Well, a study that was carried out in Israel, looked at reasons for puppies being taken on during the pandemic, and looked at the fact that, in that study, 38.5% of them had already considered adopting a dog, but then when they were at home during COVID, that seemed like the best time to do it. So it wasn't that they'd never thought about getting a dog, but they were now feeling they were able to.

But there were other reasons, 37.8% of them said that they'd planned to adopt adopt a dog anyway. So we have got, in this study from Israel, quite high numbers of people who had thought about getting a dog.

9.3% in this study had heard about dog abandonment in the media and therefore thought they had a a a were compelled, if you like, they had a reason to take on a dog because they were seeing reports of dogs being abandoned and wanted to help. 8% of them were looking at it more from their perspective in terms of feeling lonely or stressed because of COVID, believing that owning a dog might help them.

And 6.4% gave a range of other reasons. And if you look at this diagram taken from that paper, the ones in red, the reasons in red are those that were related specifically to the pandemic.

So they'd had time during this crisis, they heard about dog abandonment, they wanted to reduce their own stress and loneliness, or they wanted to keep their kids busy and they wanted an excuse to leave the house. So what about the UK? Well, I've already referred to the fact that Rowena Packer and her team have been carrying out this study of pandemic puppies, and they have published a couple of papers.

In fact, I'll mention the second paper later today, and that is really new, hot off the press. Rowena very kindly emailed me this morning, about the fact that that has literally just been published. So we've got some information from that, which is very hot off the press.

But this is the first paper that was published from that study. And they were looking at the, basically looking at purchase motivations, looking at purchase behaviours. So, this is looking at similar things that were looked at in this Israeli study.

And there's some interesting, quite a lot of differences between the Israeli study and also, as we'll see later, some other countries in terms of what's happened. In these motivations and purchase behaviours of UK caregivers. So this study is looking at those people who were purchasing puppies less than 16 weeks of age between this period of the 23rd of March 2020, the onset of first lockdown and the 31st of December, and comparing those with those purchasing during the same period in 2019.

And what we found in the UK population is that over 1 in 10 had not considered purchasing a puppy before the pandemic, and 2 in 5 of them felt that their decision to purchase was influenced by the pandemic. And also, the most common pandemic related reason that was given was having more time to care for a dog. So 86.7% of the respondents gave that as their main reason, having not considered purchasing a puppy before the pandemic.

Having a puppy as a companion was a common theme as the overall main reason, both in those purchasing in 2019 and 2020. But, although that's in common between the two populations, other reasons showed quite considerable differences between those two time periods. So something that was lower in the proportion of pandemic puppy caregivers compared to 2019 was those that cited that they were getting a dog as a companion for another dog, or they were getting a dog for a specific working role, or they were getting a dog for a specific role that would not be considered as working, but would be things like sport.

So. Less people during the pandemic were citing those particular reasons. Another thing that was different between the populations was that in the pandemically acquired puppies, there tended to be more of a household wide desire to get a puppy when compared to the 2019 puppy population, where it was more likely that the person responding to the questionnaire was the primary person driving for getting a puppy.

So it did appear that it was more of a family decision. During the pandemic. And then there were some, specific reasons during the pandemic that were increased in relation to in comparison to the 2019 population.

So this idea of acquiring a puppy specifically to improve the mental health of the caregiver themselves, increasing physical exercise for caregivers, which is similar to the wanting an excuse to get outside in the other study that we mentioned earlier. And also to provide companionship for children, which was also mentioned in the other study that I cited earlier. So are the caregivers of these pandemic puppies different from those before the pandemic in terms of their profile, their demographics.

We've looked at their motivations, but what about the people involved? Well, again, going back to Rowena and her colleagues, they've reported differences between the caregivers who were taking on puppies in 2020 compared to those in 2019. And one of the striking things in the UK study is that these caregivers were less likely to have previously had a dog.

So 59.7% have got previous experience of being a dog caregiver compared with 66.7% of 2019 puppy caregivers.

Interestingly, though, there wasn't a difference in the proportion of caregivers from the pandemic population and the 2019 puppies in terms of whether they'd grown up with a dog, which I think is interesting. So, experience of dogs, yes, but not having been a caregiver themselves for a dog prior to the pandemic. The other thing that was interesting from the RVC study, was that caregivers and pandemic puppies were less likely to be employed in the animal care sector.

So us as veterinary surgeons, veterinary nurses, but also people working in other dog-related care sectors like trainers were less represented in the pandemic puppy caregiver group than in the 2019 group of puppy caregivers. Now I said I'd just compare with some other studies. So in preparation for this series of, of, webinars, I've been looking at a lot of literature from around the world, and I'll talk about some others, of the other papers when we, when we're talking about a slightly different angle next week.

But when you look at this acquisition and the reasons for taking on a puppy, but also this demographic, the study in Australia actually found quite a difference in terms of the caregiver profile, in terms of previous experience. This is taken from this Pets and the pandemic report. And they showed that 53% of all dogs and cats, so they included cats in this figure, acquired during the pandemic were by existing dog and cat owners, and that COVID-specific reasons were rarely selected as a key motivation for acquisition within this study in Australia.

So let's go back to our UK pandemic puppy caregivers and the differences that were identified. So, pandemic puppies were more likely to live in households that had both adults and children compared to 2019 puppies. And of those households that had children, there was also a difference in In the age group.

So, these pandemic puppy households are more likely to have younger children aged 5 to 10 years, less likely to have older teenagers. So we're looking at puppies going into homes with, novice caregivers, haven't had a dog before, and with having children in a younger age bracket. The other thing that was, shown in the pandemic study was that it was more likely that these puppies would be the only dog in the household compared to 2019.

So we saw earlier that they were less likely to be acquiring a dog as a companion for an existing dog, when we looked at the difference in their reasons and motivations for puppy purchasing. Pandemic puppy caregivers were also, more likely to find their puppy in, in different ways, if you like. So they're more likely to go to animal selling websites.

That's not probably surprising when we think about the fact we were all homebound and computers were our main way of communicating with the outside world. More likely to, get their puppy via, recommendations of breeders from friends, so, so personal recommendations. And less likely to already know the puppy's breeder.

Well, that ties in with the fact that they're less likely to have been dog caregivers already in the past, and less likely to go via the Kennel Club website, interestingly. So Physical advertisements, so advertisements, in papers, etc. Also far less likely in this group, and again that that's ties in with our use of computers over this period.

So we have looked at the profile of, the, the new caregivers in terms of their motivations, their reasons. We've looked at some changes in the demographic profile of these caregivers. And what are the sorts of things that we start to get concerned about then, from this difference in the caregiver population?

I think one of the concerns was whether these new caregivers were really prepared for this new arrival, not just in terms of it arriving now, but in terms of the long-term commitment to having this animal in their lives and the complexity, if you like, of the role of being a dog caregiver. And these sorts of, headlines and and articles about impulse decision making, one in 4 admitting impulse buying of a puppy during the pandemic. These were the sorts of things that sort of made me start to think, have they actually really considered the full implications?

And if they. Haven't done that. Is it possible that there could be an issue once the pandemic's over, and life returns to normal in terms of abandonment?

So, a worry and a concern about whether there could be an increased risk of pets being abandoned. And I think this is something that we're, we're monitoring at the moment. Is this something?

That is going to significantly increase risk for these puppies of being relinquished, and obviously the strain that that is gonna put potentially onto the charity sector in terms of rehoming. But I also want to think about the concerns, not just over human behaviour, and what humans might be going to do, because of the way in which their decision has been made, but also think about welfare concerns for the puppies themselves. And if we go back to the RVC study, it's shown that caregivers who were purchasing pandemic puppies were less likely, To seek out a breeder who performed health tests, and that was both the genetic DNA type tests and also veterinary screening tests such as the canine health schemes.

Also, the pandemic puppies were significantly less likely to have had a veterinary health check prior to purchase. So, asking questions about physical health of these puppies appears to have been less of a, consideration for people taking on puppies during this time. Also, there was a really interesting finding from the RVC study that the proportion of puppies sold with a pet passport was significantly higher in this pandemic puppy population.

And it's been said that this is a potential red flag for illegal importing of puppies. So, puppies being smuggled and imported illegally into the country. A 100% increase has been reported in the number of puppies imported during 2020 in comparison to 2019.

Now, the thing, other thing we want to be, sort of aware of is not only that these puppies may be more likely to be imported, but also the age at which that importation. May take place. So, there is legislation, there's a couple of pieces named here, which are cited in the RBC study.

So regulations for commercial transport of puppies and non-commercial pet travel regulations. Both of those pieces of legislation say that puppies must be a minimum of 15 weeks old when they are imported. And yet, In the study, it was found that 87.4% of puppies sold with passports in 2020 were less than 13 weeks of age when they were sold.

And so there's quite a lot of concerns that are raised over these sorts of, pieces of information about these puppies being sold with passports. First of all, it's potentially, it, there is a potential, sorry, that these puppies could be coming from poor rearing conditions, or it's certainly rearing conditions that would not meet. The standards that we set in the UK because of intensive breeding establishments, we also need to be aware that in certain parts of Eastern Europe, it is still legal to puppy farm.

And also it may be considerably cheaper to produce puppies, in these sorts of locations, which may therefore lead to an even greater potential for profit if we're then selling those puppies in the UK market at these massively inflated prices. So some concerns over where are these puppies coming from, where have they been reared, and what is the motivation for importing them? Is that a financial motivation?

Also, where are these puppies coming from and how are they getting here? And also, if they're coming under 13 weeks of age, these are potentially young puppies travelling without their mothers long distances. And it's been shown that coming to the UK by road potentially can take several days.

So these puppies at a very important time in terms of their behavioural and emotional development, are potentially being transported long distances, without their mothers, and coming into the UK. The other thing is a bit more of a global consideration in terms of canine health and welfare. It's about our risk of importing disease into the UK control of infectious diseases, etc.

So, let's have a look then at, at, that's, we're talking, I've been talking there a little bit about physical health in terms of these imported dogs. And obviously, I'm thinking about, emotional challenge as well for those puppies that are being imported at this young age and transported, over these large distances. But I want to just focus for a moment now on the potential for pandemic puppies to have emotional health challenges.

And I'm gonna refer to my sync model of emotional health, which some of you may already be familiar with, in order to look at the potential for the pandemic to have impacted on emotional health. So, in order for an individual to be emotionally stable, we need this good balance. We need a balance between emotional input, represented in the sync model by the two taps, by the cold tap representing the, engaging or positive emotions and the red tap, the protective or negative emotions.

And that being balanced with the emotional capacity of the individual represented in the sync model by the size of the sink. And having those things in balance with the drainage, the dis dissipation of emotion once it's served its purpose. So if we have good emotional stability, a good balance between sync size, input and output, we're left with residue which is within the capacity of the individual, so that they are less likely to struggle emotionally.

So why might pandemic puppies be at more risk of emotional instability? Let's first of all, look at emotional capacity, the size of the sink. Well, that's influenced by genetic factors, and it's influenced as well by early rearing.

So, things like the emotional health of the parents influences the emotional health of their offspring. And that's not only the mother, there's, there's a genetic component to that, and there's also a physical component to that via the mum. So, caretakers who took on puppies in the pandemic were shown in the RBC study to be increasingly using websites for those purchases, more likely to be relying on video clips to choose their puppies rather than actually meeting the puppies in person, which makes sense, because during the lockdown, of course, going and visiting litters was not going to be possible.

Also, 21% of them were less likely to have visited what was reported to be the puppy's breeder's house in person before they brought the puppy home. So they've not had direct interaction with the puppies before they took them on. Fewer puppies were seen in their rearing environments, so availability of information about early rearing was really limited for caregivers taking on puppies during the pandemic.

One in 4 puppies who were acquired during 2020 were bought without the caregiver meeting the mum, so they had no interaction with the dam and therefore unable to assess her in terms of her potential emotional influence. And more puppies were delivered to caregivers or collected in. Service stations or car parks.

So direct interaction between the new caregivers and the breeders was limited, and acquisition, therefore, of information about the potential emotional capacity in terms of genetic factors and early rearing is likely to have been quite significantly hampered during the pandemic. And why is that important? Why is knowing about the breeding and rearing of these puppies important?

Well, because it has an impact on maximising emotional stability. The breeder has a really important role to play in, first of all, making sure they have optimised genetic influence. Now that is something that is not necessarily something that's done brilliantly outside of the pandemic, but for all the reasons which we've already discussed, there is a higher risk factor potentially for the genetic influence to have been less considered, and that can have an influence on the sync size, on the emotional capacity.

Also, minimising emotional, sorry, emotional, protective bias, and therefore, physiological stress in breeding bitches, is really important in terms of, again, maximising sync capacity. So the mother has an effect. On the, on the emotional development of puppies whilst they are still in utero.

And that is something that we need to be thinking about as well in the, in the breeders' roles. So we want those bitches to have, good emotional health during their pregnancy. In terms of what's referred to as valence, so that's more the tap selection, whether we're looking.

At the cold or the hot tap, we, we want to have breeders who are establishing positive emotional responses in these puppies from an early age. So they are setting these puppies up for success, and then they're reducing the salience of stimuli. They're reducing the flow rate from that tap by engaging in good socialisation and non-social environmental learning.

And then establishing resilience in the sync model, thinking about drainage. So you can see the breeder has got a very large influence on that emotional stability, that influence, sorry, that interplay and balance between capacity, input and output. So if we have lower levels of interaction between caregivers and breeders before purchasing, which we know has happened during the pandemic, that increases the risk of puppies having less appropriate genetic influences or more stunted emotional sync because the caregivers are not getting the information to make those judgments.

Also, potentially poor maternal care could adversely affect the emotional development of these puppies. And that's because the HPA axis develops both pre and post-partuition. So, whilst they're carrying puppies, if the, the bitch is in a state of chronic, physiological stress, that will adversely affect the development of the HPA axis.

So there's a considerable difference for the bitch in terms of her welfare between these two bitches. But not only is the bitch affected, but also the puppies that she's carrying. And they're not only affected in the here and now in terms of their welfare during pregnancy, but also their potential to have emotional difficulties later in life.

Obviously, once they're born, there's a potential for there to be unresolved negative emotional motivation in the bitch. And if she is in a negative state, that that may affect the development of her puppies after they're born. So we need lactating bitches to be in a positive emotional bias.

So the puppies obviously on the right hand side. With a, a relaxed mother, and the puppy's on the left-hand side with a mother who's in a protective emotional bias, as we can see from her whale eye and her body posture, they're gonna have a very different experience in terms of their emotional development. And we also need to remember that these neonatal puppies, although they are not able to have visual and auditory communication, they are still communicating with the world, and they're communicating with their mother through tactile and olfactory input.

So her emotional state at this time is crucially important. Obviously, as soon as they do have auditory and visual communication, we have a massive expansion in their ability to learn about their environment and having positive emotional responses from their mum, calm and positive behavioural responses from her, will make it more likely that these puppies will create positive perceptions. So if we have bitches who are in a state of negative emotion.

During that afterbirth phase, that is also going to be a risk factor for adversely affecting the puppy's development. So when we think about the, the breeder's ability to have an influence on emotional capacity, on the size of the sink of the individual, and on their ability to have a functional HPA access, we can see that having knowledge of the breeder is incredibly important. And then having information about what's happened in terms of early introductions to life.

So, if we can have early positive introduction to an environment which is similar to the environment that the puppy's going to live in, then that is going to be very beneficial. And actually, we're looking for this similarity between life at the breeders and life in the ultimate home. Which means that there's there's not one ideal breeding environment, it depends what the ultimate destination of that individual is likely to be.

But again, if we don't have good communication between prospective puppy caregivers and breeders, this work on making sure we optimise this similarity is likely to be threatened. And socialisation and non-social environmental learning are, again, really important in order to create these positive emotional associations with things that are either living or non-living, which is the, the difference between those two, those two terms, socialisation for the introduction to living things and non-social environmental learning about the inanimate things within the environment. So why might pandemic puppies be more at risk of developing emotional instability?

It's partly in relation to that capacity. And it's also in relation to valence. So we've touched a little bit there on the breeder's role in terms of valence.

We need to also remember that emotional input is not just about valence. So the first thing is whether that input is primarily engaging or positive or protective or negative, and we've talked a little bit about that. With those processes of socialisation and non-social environmental learning at the breeders, I'm gonna come on to the caregiver role in a moment.

But the second thing, which is sometimes forgotten in terms of emotional input, is also the issue of arousal. So that's the amount of emotion, not just the type, and also it's relative input in relation to that capacity. So the puppy's emotional bias is influenced, as we've just said, by the breeder, but also by the new caregiver and by anyone else who's involved with the puppy in those first weeks of life.

And obviously, these pandemic puppies were coming into their new caregivers' lives and into their new environments at a time when there were some restrictions on the complexity and diversity of the experiences that they could have. So, socialisation and non-social environmental learning needs to carry on in the new home, and breeders, ideally are communicating with the new caregivers about everything they've done already, giving guidance as to how that could be continued, so that the caregivers are ready to offer this complexity, but very importantly, complexity in a positive way and in a controlled environment. Because we know that if they're not in a positive emotional state during exposure, then we're not achieving socialisation and no positive non-social environmental learning.

As a veterinary profession, we need to think about the veterinary visit, a very specific experience that puppies need to be prepared for. So, for many puppies, it's the waiting room and the consulting room. For some, it may of course be hospitalisation areas that they need to be introduced to, and we want to be working to increase their positive emotional valence whilst they're at.

The veterinary practise. Now we know that during the pandemic, the experience of the veterinary practise was very different, and there were some restrictions, particularly in the early, parts of the pandemic, in terms of our ability to give more preventative healthcare rather than emergency healthcare. Obviously for very valid reasons in terms of protecting human health at that time.

But we can see that there's a potential for there to be an impact on the puppies that were coming into their new caregiver's home during that early part of the first lockdown. The valence of emotional state, I've just alluded to this, is very important, because they need to be in this positive emotional context in order to get this level of emotional stability. And if they're in a negative emotional state, whilst they're introduced to, novelty, both social and non-social, then actually, they can become sensitised.

And so, it doesn't matter that a public is being exposed to a great variety of experiences, if that's happening whilst they're in a protective emotional bias, they may actually become sensitised. And interestingly, in the RBC study, we'll look in a moment at some of the things that Rowena and her team found, but one of the things they did see was that there was not a considerable difference between the attempts at socialisation. And non-social environmental learning by caregivers.

In other words, people were trying to give these puppies experiences. But of course, one of the concerns is how much guidance was being given as to how that should be done and to what the important factors are in making sure that that exposure is successful at a time when access to professional help was severely limited. Obviously, the other thing that's important is about making sure that when you're, attempting to set up appropriate learning, that you're seeing things from the dog's perspective, that you're aware of how the public.

Is learning and how they may be learning inappropriate or unwanted associations. So, having an understanding of natural behaviour, having an understanding of body language, and of the ability of a dog to, Input information and to give information, so differences in sensitivity to an interpretation of communication signals, is really important, because without that understanding, you can get a lot of miscommunication happening. So, puppies have very highly developed senses and can pick up on signals that caregivers are completely unaware of.

They're communicating with the world in ways that we as humans find very difficult to understand. Also, we need to remember that there are massive differences between human behaviour and dog behaviour in terms of the meaning of interactions. And it's possible for dogs to misinterpret human behaviour, perceiving it as negative when that was never the intention.

So things like the use of licking and leaning, which are coming from a protective emotional bias, so licking in order to get access to sent information, leaning in order to get tactile information. These are things that can be misinterpreted, lead to miscommunication, and unintentionally result in increasing fear, anxiety motivation. Now in order to.

Negate this risk, we need good education. We need to have puppy caregivers getting access to the correct information as early as possible, so that they understand why it's important not to hug and kiss, puppies and why it's important not to roll them over and rub their bellies because. Because these things don't mean the same thing to the puppy as they do to the caregiver.

A caregiver is seeing these as affectionate interactions based on human interpretation of proximity and facial contact, whereas the dog is gonna be interpreting those interactions from a canine perspective. So for pandemic puppies, what are the risks then in terms of emotional valence? Well, they might have had limited opportunities to engage with unfamiliar people and dogs, limited opportunity to encounter no.

Surroundings, to go in the car, even to come to the veterinary practise, or be handled by other people. So, such as groomers or trainers or go to puppy classes. And we'll come back to some information about that from the study in a moment.

So lack of options for this social socialisation and non-social environmental learning outside of the home, and as I say, the study suggests that people did try very hard to factor in socialisation, but their opportunity to do that in a complex manner may have been limited. And that is a risk factor for puppies having a predominance of protective emotion when they do meet novelty. And if they have a protective bias when they're meeting these things, they're at increased risk of sensitization during that process.

The RVC study looked at the early life experiences in the paper that's just been published, and in that paper, they showed that the pandemic puppies who were less than 16 weeks of age were less likely to have had visitors to their home compared to 2019 puppies. So yes, they have social experience with their family members, but not with an extended experience to other humans. The other thing the study showed was that these puppies were also less likely to have attended puppy training classes.

Now, if we think about the role of puppy training classes in terms of education of the caregiver, as well as the potential for experiences for the puppy. So there are lots of studies that have demonstrated a link between attending puppy classes and having a reduction in a variety of different unwanted behavioural presentations. COVID related restrictions meant that we were less likely to be holding in-person classes.

They were less likely to be out there and available, and that may be one of the reasons why these puppies were less likely to have attended a training class just because they were not available. But there may be other factors as well that influence whether or not these pandemic puppies have gone to classes. For example, it's been shown that younger adult owners and people with children are less likely to go to puppy classes, and that was true both in the 2019.

And the 2020 cohort. So, if we think about the change in the demographics of caregivers that we've just talked about, so we've got puppies going into families with younger adult owners and with children, that could be a factor in reducing puppy class attendance. We also know from other studies that caregivers of dogs under 20 kg are less likely to go to drug training of any sort.

A small breed, cross breed puppies are less likely to be taken to classes compared to medium, large, or giant breed breed or cross breed puppies. So, if we look at the, demographics of the puppies, the proportion of purebred puppies was lower in the pandemic puppies 2020 versus 2019. And there was an increase in designer crossbred puppies.

So the poodle crosses. For example. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that those were, smaller, because, obviously, there is a massive, range in size in the crossbred designer, type puppy population.

But that's, and another possible factor in terms of, is it to do with the types of puppies as well as the types of caregivers that has influenced the attendance at puppy classes. For pandemic puppies, there's also been another issue in terms of their exposure to social interaction within the home. So we've talked about the fact that they may have had less opportunity to have exposure to, novelty and complexity.

But with more novice caregivers who have less information about normal body language and communication at home in a more intense manner, with less opportunity. Go to classes and gain more training and information for the human, rather than for the puppy. There's more potential for these inappropriate interactions with the puppies, more potential for miscommunication, and that could also be a risk factor for increased protective emotional bias.

One of the things that we've heard a lot about in terms of concerns as lockdown starts to ease and as we go back to more reality, is the idea that separation from these human caregivers may be problematic for this population of puppies. And the potential factors involved in this are. The fact we've got novice caregivers who may not have had the right information available to them about how to prepare puppies in terms of living in a domestic environment and weaning them away from the nurturing interaction that very small puppies require.

They may also be the only dog in the household, as we saw from the demographic changes. They may have been intensely nurtured. We saw that one of the reasons for humans taking on puppies at this time was because of emotional support for the humans.

That often will lead to more intense nurturing interaction with the puppy, and a lack of exposure to separation because of the fact that people were in the home permanently. And with those factors, we have the potential for emotional bias to be altered in terms of these puppies being more fearful and anxious because they have been less, encouraged to make their own decisions and to be independent in terms of their behavioural responses, and more likely to be supplied with information, which decreases the potential for self-confidence. They may be more likely to be frustrated because their expectation of interaction is much higher, in these puppies compared to puppies that have had a more normal interaction, with availability of humans during puppyhood.

And they may have a more increased bias towards panic grief, the emotion that's associated with losing access to your nurturer. And then the fact that arousal also is important. We said that when we talked about emotional input, it wasn't just the valence, it was also the amount or the flow rate.

The emotional arousal is about how much water is coming into the sink, and obviously, if the flow rate is high, there's more potential for residue to build up, particularly if that input is out of proportion to drainage. So these puppies who are exposed to lots and lots of really happy and exciting experiences may not be benefiting from that as much as, as might be thought, because of the fact that now we're giving them more input than they can cope with, either because of the size of their sink, or because drainage is being limited. So for pandemic puppies, where people were present almost consistently and children were at home, particularly because of home schooling, and we saw that one of the reasons for taking on a puppy was for companionship and occupation of the children.

It's possible that these puppies have got a lot of very interactive contact. Doesn't mean that I was necessarily detrimental, but just so much of it that their emotional taps were turned on. Turned on at high flow rates and for prolonged durations.

Play sessions more likely to be encountered frequently, more likely to be of longer duration. People were keen to get out of the house. Another reason we saw that people took puppies on, say, more walks, longer walks, and also more intense, more persistent social interaction, all leading to a higher amount of emotional arousal.

And then the third thing, and the final thing is the emotional drainage. Drainage is what enables the individual to reduce the amount of residue in the sink and therefore maximise their availability of space, of availability of emotional capacity. And this balance, as we said earlier, between input and, drainage is really important.

So how do dogs drain? Well, their drainage behaviours include sleep, particularly, high levels of sleep in comparison to human requirements for sleep. So, most caregivers are quite shocked when they learn that an adult dog.

Needs to sleep between 16 and 18 hours in 24, the puppies need as much as 20 hours of sleep in 24. That means there's only actually 4 hours of the day in which you are actively engaging with a puppy. And during the pandemic, it's very likely that many puppies were not in that position.

Chewing as well is a really important drainage behaviour for dogs and misunderstanding of chewing behaviour and seeing it as an, as a, a bad behaviour or a behaviour that is you know, detrimental to the furniture and therefore something to be discouraged can be a problem. So again, education is important about knowing that puppies need access to the correct things to chew on. So increased human presence in the home, increased interaction may have limited the sleep opportunities for these puppies and chewing may have been discouraged rather than directed onto suitable targets.

And a lack of time alone may also have meant that they had less ability to select these drainage behaviours. So I just want to summarise then, using the sink, the relevance of COVID in terms of emotional health. It's influenced emotional capacity because there's been an increase in selection of puppies with no research into parental influences.

There's a potential for these C-19 restrictions to have influenced the protective emotional bias of the parents through lack of selection or through the way in which they were influenced by the changes in their own environment due to COVID. And increased levels of unscrupulous breeding possibly related to the puppy price hike. COVID has also influenced emotional valence, so lack of opportunity for socialisation and non-social environmental learning, and an increased risk of sensitization if they were in a negative emotional bias when they were being exposed to experiences, may have led to an increased bias towards those protective emotions.

So, fear, anxiety, frustration, and panic grief. And then COVID has influenced emotional arousal, so that's the residue in the sink because the emotional input would be higher if the taps are turned on all day and potentially decreased emotional drainage through things like a lack of opportunity to sleep. So the COVID pandemic has really significantly affected us.

It's affected our routines, it's affected our emotional health. And as we've seen from the studies, it's affected our attitudes to being caregivers for domestic dogs and our demographics of the people who are caring for dogs in our population. That has impacted on the welfare of puppies, but it's also led to risk factors in relation to their emotional stability and their resilience.

And this emotional instability and the potential for a protective emotional bias are risk factors for problematic behaviours. So the risks as lockdown eases, these pandemic puppies have got this series of risk factors that could be very problematic for caregivers as we come out of the pandemic. We have puppies potentially with smaller sinks, a predominance of protective emotion, and less emotional resilience.

We also have the potential that they have a lack of opportunity to experience a complex world from a position of safety, and that means that emotional intelligence, that's the ability to make good choices in terms of behavioural responses, may have been limited. Because if they've had increased exposure to, they're going to have, sorry, increased exposure to unfamiliar social contacts, as they come out of lockdown. If they're in an emotional bias towards those protective emotions, there's a potential that they may start to develop unwanted behavioural responses towards a series of unfamiliar stimuli.

People, other dogs, novelty through things like noises or or visual novelty, and the puppies may also be more likely, therefore, to engage in behavioural responses which are associated with protective emotion, repelling and avoiding the things they're concerned about, but also showing inhibition and appeasement, which are behavioural responses, which can be misinterpreted. And again, we can get into problems of miscommunication. Because they've had less availability of social interaction with people now as they go back to work, that could also lead to higher levels of panic, grief, frustration, fear, anxiety, and leading to the sorts of behavioural responses we traditionally talk about in the context of separation, such as vocalisation, elimination and destruction.

So, we've got a population at risk. How are we gonna reduce the risk of unwanted behavioural responses in these pandemic puppies? Well, we need to be thinking about improving their emotional health, working to increase their engaging emotional bias.

Things like self-confidence work, and I'd refer you to Sarah Fisher's work at Animal centred Education, where she talks about the use of something called free work. Supporting them through the use of things like pheromones and nutraceuticals, and also reducing their protective emotional bias by better education, by making up for that lack of support for caregivers during the pandemic, and protecting puppies from overexposure, particularly overexposure, which is leading to high arousal. And then we need to change their cognitive health, but we can't do that until they are emotionally capable.

So, wanting to increase their positive associations with departure and with dogs, and with people is, is our ultimate aim, but we need to remember that there may be a lot of emotional health work to do before we get to that point. So, in conclusion, we can say the COVID pandemic has had very significant effects on us, on humans, but also on non-human animals. The puppies that were born, that were reared and acquired during this pandemic have got a set of risk factors that are raising quite a lot of concern in terms of their ongoing health and welfare.

And that means that we, as a veterinary profession, I've got a really important role to play. We need to be helping in the response to the challenges that the pandemic has caused. And there really has never been a more important time for the provision of behavioural medicine services within general practise, where we as a profession, consider the health triad of physical, emotional, and cognitive health, and provide an all-encompassing service in terms of healthcare for these pandemic puppies.

So, thank you very much. I hope we have got time for a couple of questions. Sarah, thank you.

That was absolutely fascinating. And folks, just a reminder that this was part one of 3 parts. The next part, again on dogs is next week.

And then the third one, which is gonna be all about cats, is at the end of the month. I'd also like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to our sponsors bought by many. It is thanks to their generous sponsorship that we are able to bring this fascinating topic to you, as an open webinar.

So thank you to brought by many. And Sarah, this is, almost disheartening and, and I, I find myself sitting listening to you, absolutely fascinated, but rather fearful. Fearful for these puppies.

Yeah, absolutely, and for, for, you know, I, I, I think we should all be very worried about what's happened and what the potential, . Consequences of what has happened are, for the dog population. So yes, I, I think we're, we're at the beginning of a very difficult time, and, and we already know that the veterinary profession is, is in a difficult place just because of the pure numbers of pets that have been.

But if we also factor into that, that some of them are emotionally quite damaged, or have the potential to have risk factors for developing emotional problems, then the, the, the, you know, the, the likelihood of increased presentations, not only of behavioural problems, and this is really important, that's why I talked at the end. About that health triad, is that when you have chronic physiological stress, that also impacts on your health. So, we're likely to see more gut problems, we're likely to see more bladder problems, more issues of skin disease.

So, it will be the physical health of these individuals that also has the potential to be affected by the fact that they have got these emotional risk factors. Yeah, and then of course we've also got the The, the big thing that's playing on my mind at the moment is, is is this potential issue of abandonment because we know that, you know, there's a lot of good people out there and, and people who absolutely love their pets and that. But sometimes you find that, you know, when the mentality of oh well we'll get a puppy to make us feel better during COVID, and then when they go back to work or whatever the case is and puppy starts chewing and digging holes and You know, screaming the place down and the neighbours are complaining, it's not always logical responses that kick in and it's, it's just one of, oh, well, you know, get rid of it.

And and that potentially could be a huge problem for us. Yeah, I think we have to remember this isn't easy for many of these caregivers as well, a lot of these caregivers, you know, are, are severely traumatised by what's happening as well. So, you know, yes, some of them, will go down the relinquishment route, but.

Many of them are really trying hard to work with them and finding that this is, this is so much more, of an enormous challenge than they realised, and they don't have the resources to deal with it. They haven't thought about insurance and all those sorts of things. And that can be a fact, that, that's a problem.

And then also, we may, and we don't know yet, what will happen in terms of requests for euthanasia from us as a profession as well. So. I think, you know, there's, there's a lot of, of things we don't know yet, and I, I, I've, I've said a big thank you to Rowena Packer already, but I think that study at RBC is crucially important, and the information we can gather from that will be really important going forward as well, as to how we deal with this.

Yeah, absolutely. And funny you mentioned that effect there's one of the, the comments that's been put through is, is about the need for, you know, help and protection and support for the mental health of the veterinary staff, who will potentially be exposed to this increased level of euthanasia that potentially could happen. Yeah, I, well, I, I think we need a lot of support for the, the, the mental health of the veteran profession for many, many reasons, one of which is the, the fact that this pandemic has had, you know, a massive impact on the profession directly, but also potentially through the change of demographic of the of the caregivers that we're dealing with now.

As well, so, yeah, whether or not we're gonna see a rise in in euthanasia requests, as far as I'm aware there's no evidence of that yet. I'm I'm to be corrected on that if anyone has published anything I've that I've not seen. But I, I don't think we have evidence of that yet, but I think that that is one of the fears that we have, and also obviously the relinquishment numbers.

So yeah, yes, I, I agree that mental health support for the veterinary profession is absolutely crucial, but on many, many levels. Levels, yeah, I agree, I agree. Helen asks an interesting question.

She says, you know, we, we're all talking about the increase in demand and the increase in price and indiscriminate breeding and blah blah blah with COVID. But she says the PDSA's poor report did not find a statistically significant rise in dog population. Any insight into why this might be?

Yeah, I think the, the thing about, the, the actual numbers, or is, is it actual numbers or is it the numbers combined with the demographic changes that is going, is having the impact that we're feeling, . I also think that there's confusing information at the moment as to the numbers, that, that are coming into the population compared to what would have already come in. So, you know, we, we have a rising population of dogs anyway, and is it that we actually have, you know, significantly increased on the number, or is it that the demographic.

Of where they've come from and who they're coming to has altered. So I think, I think we need more work on that, to be honest, Helen, in terms of understanding what these changes are, not just in terms of literal numbers, but also in terms of the, the interplay if you like, between the demographics of the caregivers and the numbers of puppies. Yeah, fantastic.

There's loads of comments coming through about fantastic webinar and everything else. Greg has asked, would you be willing to give out your email address because he has a, an incredibly difficult case that he would like to get some advice on. And I'm sure there's other people that would, would like to make use of your services as well.

Yeah, if you email through to the practise, office email, so it's office at And then the initials of the practise, so behavioural referrals, veterinary practise, so it's office at BRVP.co.uk.

We do have the Bass subscription service as well, the behavioural advice subscription service, available to general practises, so if you want to get ongoing, behavioural medicine support in terms of email contact and the ability to ask questions about cases then. If you email that office at BRVP.co.uk, email and ask for information about Bass BASS behavioural advice subscription service, we can give you details of that as well.

Fantastic. And Dawn's being super efficient as she always is, has popped that email address in the chat box for everybody. Folks, we have run out of time tonight, but remember, as I said, the next one is this time next week, and then the one after that is at the end of the month.

So it's just up to me to thank everybody for attending, to thank once again bought by many, and then a special thank you to Sarah Heath, our fabulous presenter. Can't wait to hear the 2nd and 3rd parts of the Sarah. Thank you for your time and thank you for sharing your information with us.

Very, very welcome, thank you. Thanks, folks. We will see you on the next webinar from myself, Bruce Stevenson, it's goodnight.