Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinarest welcoming you to the second in our COVID-19 pandemic series, which has been brought to you thanks to the kind sponsorship of Bought by Many, the insurance company. And we're gonna be talking today about how has it affected dogs and their caregivers. There's probably nobody better, to give this talk in the UK than my good friend Sarah Heath, not only is she a very, Very exceptionally good behavioural medicine consultant.

But she's also . A Liverpool supporter. Can I, can you hear me, Sarah?

I can, indeed, yes. No, it sounds like somebody else called, but hopefully that, that, oh you can hear now, that's great, good. So really looking forward to the talks, Sarah, we, we, we may put a couple of mentions in about Liverpool during the talk, but we'll, we'll try and probably spend most of the time talking about the pandemic, which should cheer us up, thank goodness.

We seem to be getting to the end stages now, but it would be great to hear where everybody is listening in from as well. So if you want to pop your place where you're listening in from, that'll be really good and I'll feed that back to Sarah as we get close to questions at the end. Sarah, thank you so much for giving your time.

I know how busy you are. I'm really looking forward to seeing the research on this. Thanks, Sarah.

It's a pleasure. Hi everybody, thanks very much for coming out to a webinar or doing a webinar at home or wherever you are, after a long day at work. I know how difficult it is to do that, so I really appreciate that.

So I hope everyone can see the screen, no problem, and that the the sound is OK. I've done the phoning in because we had some issues with the computer sound as we were setting up, so I hope it's OK. Anthony let me know if anything happens with it, during the presentation.

OK, so let's just so our, our titles, Anthony's already given you the C-19 pandemic, but this week we're looking at how it's affected dogs and their caregivers. So I just wanted to recap then what's happened as if we could possibly forget. We've had a global pandemic.

We've had the first one to involve the UK in living memory, and it's been fairly significant. So if we look at some of the data, this is 2 days ago, the most recent data I could find. And over 450 million infections worldwide.

And interestingly, when I first started looking at this, partway through, I remember that the figure I had at that point, and I suppose that is probably about 6 or 7, no, probably more than that months ago, it was 10 million infections worldwide, so now 7, 450. And over 6 million human deaths worldwide and rising in both of those situations as Anthony just said, we're coming to a different phase of the pandemic, but it certainly isn't over. And we also need to remember that it's not at the same stage in every country either.

So we look at it worldwide, it is still rising. And then if we look at the UK figures, we've had over 19 million infections again, that's from data from updated two days ago and also over 162,000 deaths in the UK and rising. And I remember right at the very beginning when we were told that if we could get away with 20,000 deaths, then we'd be doing well.

Well, we didn't do well then, did we? 162,000 deaths at the moment, and that number is still increasing. So we've had a major event that has had a major impact on us as humans, and what we're gonna look at tonight is the impact on us as humans and our dogs and that combination.

So let's think about the emotional impact then and initially thinking about the impact of lockdown itself, of the changes that we experienced when the pandemic first struck, and then obviously at various points during the pandemic's progress. And I'm going to look at this not just from a UK point of view, I'm going to actually bring in some information from papers that have been published from other places around the world. And it's quite interesting to look at how it's not exactly the same in all countries because of some differences in the way that the pandemic's been dealt with, but there are certainly some very common patterns across a global picture.

So what were the triggers then for emotional impact? Why would lockdown have any emotional impact? Well, probably we can think about two main areas.

Firstly, that there were changes in social interaction, and secondly, that there were changes in routine. So obviously from our perspective as humans, we had very serious reduction in social interaction with our fellow humans, and we also had changes in routine of working from home, of having children at home trying to juggle a lot more in terms of our responsibilities, our work responsibilities and our home responsibilities becoming very blurred. And so there's been a lot of information, a lot of research done on the impact of this whole event on humans, but also we've started to look at how our nonhuman animals also have the potential to be affected by such changes, not only directly for them but also via the impact on us as caregivers.

So I want to look at this from two perspectives. First of all, we're looking, as I say, at the lockdown period. I'm thinking about how that has led to some increase in the so-called positive or engaging emotions.

So if we look at these images of increased social contact, increased, availability. Of human company for the dogs during the lockdown period. So the fact that we were in our homes a lot more, that we were working from home, also had children at home.

There was an increase in desire seeking motivation, which is the motivational system from Haset's model, which is associated with having social company. So let's look at this aspect and look at the impact of that on caregivers. This is some information taken from an Australian study, so I say I'm gonna look a little bit globally at the information available.

And in this study in Australia. They said that the pandemic appears to have strengthened the relationship between people and their pets. They said 70% of respondents to this particular study, were saying that being a pet owner had improved their lives during the era of the pandemic, and they Said the benefits that they were talking about in terms of having their pets around was they had companionship, comfort, positive mental and physical health, unconditional love, all things associated with a positive emotional bias or an engaging emotional bias.

A study that was done in Spain interestingly also showed that the quality of life of owners was strongly influenced by their lifestyle and by the emotional effects of the confinement on the people, and that pets were important in providing them with support, which would mitigate the effects of lockdown on these people. Pet caregivers in this study, in the Spanish study, said that they gained substantial support and that that support was increased when their quality of life was more impaired. So it was a better impact or a more significant impact of having those pets if the people involved had impaired quality of life.

47% of people in the Spanish study indicated that this pet had helped them moderately more or much more during the lockdown period than they felt they did before that. So, the increase in this sort of proportional increase in how much they felt having a pet helped them with their quality of life increase during the pandemic. Also, we look at a study, this is another study published in the Journal of behavioural Economics, but from an Australian study, they looked at this idea of contact that when human contact was limited, so having physical contact and social interaction with humans was limited by the by the pandemic, it suggested in this study that contact with pets became even more important.

So a quote from this study is that participants described the touch-based interactions, so physical contact with their pets as being comforting and relaxing and contributing to their overall wellbeing during the pandemic. So what about benefits of contact in other ways? One of the things that comes out a lot in the various studies that we can look at is this impact of exercise, and obviously that's thought about from the dog's perspective, but from the human's perspective in the Australian study they.

Talk about, taking their dogs out for more walks as an excuse to get out of the house. And in the New Zealand study, 44.8% of the respondents said their pets got more exercise during lockdown.

Similar reports in the UK as well. But interestingly, that Spanish study that I was, looking at before, they actually talked about a decrease in walking, and that has something to do with the difference in the style of lockdown. So much stricter lockdowns in the early stages in Spain, whereas over here and in New Zealand and Australia, and getting out of the house, one of the main ways you could do that was to walk and therefore walking dogs tended to increase.

So when we look at this New Zealand study, one of the things they look at is this perception from the caregiver as to whether there was a positive impact on the pets. So we've talked about the fact that having pets does appear in the studies that are out there. It does appear across a global, situation that having pets during the pandemic was deemed to be beneficial emotionally for the people who cared for them.

But the perception of positive impact on the lockdown on pets is also important, and 84% of these respondents in the New Zealand study said that they felt their pets had also had positive benefits from lockdown. So things like having company and then in this study they talk about subtheme so they talk about areas of impact and then they talk about specific examples. So they said there were fewer rest restrictions for pets.

They weren't as likely to be spending time outside, that's quite. Cultural thing. Obviously more outdoor pets, generally in New Zealand, but because people were at home, they tended to have the animals in the house with them more, more mental stimulation, also had better quality attention.

So they said, more, more, quality time, exercising, playing, training, doing things that they didn't have time for when they were at work. And then they also, in this study, identified that for pets, there were some environmental benefits. Of the fact there were fewer cars on the road, that there was less noise outside, that there was more freedom of movement.

Interestingly, this, it varies as well between the studies that you look at, because one of the things that happened in the UK was that as people were so restricted in terms of their access to the outside world, they tended to be actually . More problem getting away from crowds, so, dog walkers saying that when they used to walk in these lovely countryside places and never see a soul, suddenly all these people who never usually walked in the country were there. And so actually there was a, a mixed reporting of whether or not it was more or less beneficial to be out in public places for pets during lockdown.

So let's then look at the potential for increased negative or protective emotional bias. So when we think about the lockdown and the changes, the changes in routine and the changes in social interaction. We see an increased potential for frustration.

Frustration is the emotion that's triggered when there's a failure for another emotional system to be successfully complied with. So I'm going to look at some examples as we go through of how frustration has been involved in the pandemic situation. And then also fear anxiety, so potential to increase fear anxiety potentially because of situations of inappropriate interactions, intense interactions, overpowering interactions, potentially with having children at home all of the time, all of the family members in the house, much higher levels of noise and activity in the house as well.

So if we look at the perception of caregivers about having negative impact on their pets, 52.1% did feel in the New Zealand study that there had been negative impact for their pets, and there were areas that they thought, were important, reduced quality of dog exercise. So this is interesting because what they were saying here was, less socialisation being restricted, so only being allowed to be on the lead, having more restricted access.

Certain areas and then more usage by community members and that's the thing we just talked about that we also had reported in the UK. So because there was less areas available to go to to exercise, more people actually using them could have this negative impact. Disrupted routines so that less time to themselves and being interrupted in their sleep and relaxation.

So some of these animals who were used to having people at work all day now found themselves with constant company. One of the things that respondents in the New Zealand study highlighted was that they had less time to themselves. And then of course, environmental changes.

I, I love the arguing humans here from this study, but extra noise inside so we were just saying more activity, more noise, more human associated stimuli, which potentially could be detrimental in terms of the emotional impact on the pets. And then also respondents were concerned about health. They were talking about restricted access to veterinary services, and that's something that's also is reported in some of the other studies as well and in other countries that people were concerned about being able to access animal services and products.

Some issues about potential for overfeeding or having excess exercise injury, so walking more often. And being taken for more walks, more anxiety and more stress and people having less money, so they felt they couldn't provide for their pets, and that would have an impact on them. We go back to the Spanish study, it's interesting in this one that 62.1% of respondents thought their overall quality of life of their pet dogs got worse.

Only 19.3% thought that it was better. So that again, some differences between the the different studies in terms of the sorts of levels of perception from caregivers as to how this has impacted on their pets.

In the Spanish study. And they talked about the fact that pets showed signs of behavioural change that were consistent with stress. They also found in that study that dogs that have preexisting behavioural problems were the most affected by these changes in behaviour during the lockdown process, and the most common behaviour problems that were reported in that study as getting worse due to the pandemic were annoying or excessive vocalisation and fear of loud or unexpected noises.

Interestingly, this study also asked for the most common general aspects of behaviour which were reported to be higher during confinement. And you can see that many of these would be linked to a negative emotional bias, or attention seeking in the terminology that I use in my sync model, the appeasement behaviour or seeking information. Being more nervous or being more excitable again, excitable could be associated with high levels of emotional arousal, not necessarily associated with positive emotional bias, although we'd need more information as to what questions are being asked, and I would recommend that you read the papers that I'm citing today if you want to find out more.

Being more frustrated, so we talked about frustration being a potential impact, more stressed again, we need to look at how this is defined and what owners are, caregivers are actually classing as stress. There are a couple of things here interesting, being more relaxed and being calmer. We also cited admittedly at lower percentages.

But also we need to remember that inhibition, which is one of the ways in which animals can respond to increased protective emotion, can be misinterpreted as being calm and relaxed. So, again, it'd be interesting to look into how these changes in behaviour are defined. One thing that's interesting is that we know a potential, there's a potential for physical health consequences if, if an animal is in a negative emotional bias for a sustained period of time, that that has a physiological effect and that that has the potential to impact on physical health.

So persistent negative emotional biases associated with various types of disease processes, things like gastrointestinal or bladder or skin or oral mucosal breakdowns leading to disease processes or in more infectious diseases and other impacts of compromised immune function. We have issues of pain perception being affected by a negative emotional bias and the potential as well for weight management issues, particularly obesity being affected if animals are eating in a sympathetic state. Now interestingly, I found it hard to find data on this from.

The various publications, not look, people haven't looked in a lot of detail at the types of physical presentations that were present, during the pandemic in dogs, and we're going to talk about cats in a couple of weeks' time, so I'll revisit that topic in the context of cats. So in the actual pandemic, during, or well it's still going on, but during the, the height of the pandemic when we were all subjected to these various changes in our social interaction and routine, we can see that there was an impact of that, both on the human caregivers and on their, on their companions, their dogs, and also on the relationship as well between them. So let's just turn our attention to the impact potential of leaving lockdown.

Well this is looked at in that New Zealand study. They asked the question, are you concerned about the future well-being of your pets after lockdown? And in that study, 40.3% expressed that they were worried about their pets.

What were they worried about? Well, their most commonly described concerns were the fact their pet would miss having company attention. And could potentially experience again separation anxiety and unfortunately that term, which is very outdated and we're trying to move away from, but it's still ubiquitous, it's still out there and people use it and in this study that term is used, separation anxiety, without definition as to whether that is actually separation anxiety or separation related frustration or separation related panic grief, and we'll talk about that in a moment.

The other thing is that they included other concerns. They were worried about accessing animal and veterinary services and products as they were coming out of lockdown and concerned about their dogs in terms of socialisation of reintroduction of social interaction with animals and people. One thing that's interesting in this study from the New Zealand study is not only did they ask about what concerns about the future of your own pets, but also are you concerned about the future of the other pets, of generally of pets in the country after lockdown.

And a very high percentage were, 64% expressed that they were. They had very similar concerns to the caregivers about their own pets, so they were worried about separation. Anxiety as they used the term loneliness and boredom and the other one said missing companies they're very similar situations that they were concerned about.

They also expressed concerns though about some more related problems with the general pet population rather than individual pets, so they were worried about the fact that people would be in a situation of financial hardship as they were coming out of lockdown and attempting to go back to reality and that that might, Impact on caring levels for the animals in the community. They're worried about unwanted pets, pets being relinquished or inadequately cared for, and they were particularly thinking about pets that were acquired during lockdown and also an increase in unwanted kittens and puppies because the concerns about lack of desexing or neutering during lockdown because of restriction of veterinary services. Also, they were concerned that there might be a decrease in exercise levels, especially for dogs, as people started to return to a more in inverted commas normal existence.

So let's look at the emotional impact of this return to so-called normal life. So we can look at that from two contrasting perspectives, so we can think about how there might be a decrease or a loss in triggering of that enhanced positive, engaging emotion, such as desire seeking. So we said how during lockdown that was potentially increased.

And now we're thinking about returning to normal life. Is there a potential for that to reduce? And then an onset, so an addition of more triggers for negative or protective emotion, particularly for anxiety, so starting to encounter things that for some of these dogs, so for the lockdown puppies they've never experienced before or for animals that were present before the pandemic, they've had a substantial change over a long period.

Time and then them being reintroduced to triggers that they may have not seen for some time. Also potential for frustration. We'll talk about how that is affected by expectations which may have altered during lockdown and the potential for panic grief, which is an emotion that's related to the loss of access to a nurturing source.

And again, that may be something we need to think about more in those pandemic puppies who may have never. Had an alteration in the nurturing level of nurturing care, but those animals who have been at home who who were present before the pandemic may also have seen a change in the way that their caregiver looked after them and they have shifted to a more intensely nurturing form of interaction. Also, potential for physical health consequences that we talked about before, there is a potential if we are getting an increase in negative protective emotional bias in these animals post lockdown, we could also be thinking about a potential for some increase in certain physical health presentations.

And then who are we worried about in terms of this transition back into normal life? Well, we're worried about all pets having a risk of emotional challenge, but potentially some are more vulnerable than others. First of all, that population of pandemic puppies, and we talked about them last week and some of the reasons why we believe that this group of puppies may be have certain risk factors for emotional illness and therefore could be more at risk of having an impact from this returning to normal life.

Elderly pets certainly may be more vulnerable, but also pets who have preexisting emotional disorders, and that was something that was brought out, as I mentioned just earlier in the Spanish study with the animals during lockdown that the behavioural consequences appeared to be greater in those that had pre-existing emotional disorders, so. These may have a diagnosed emotional disorder, so the animals who had behavioural issues before the pandemic may be more vulnerable to the exiting, but also we may have a population of, or we do have a population of animals who have undiagnosed emotional disorders, and it may well be that this transition. Could be a trigger for exposing something that is not actually new, not actually caused by the transition, but is being made more obvious and being brought to attention of caregivers because of the changes that we're experiencing as we go back into normal life.

So what sort of triggers are there for enhanced negative protective emotions? So I'm gonna first of all think about separation, and then secondly, about the return to normal life and the sorts of things that dogs may be encountering. So let's start with separation, and as I said, in the studies often talked about as separation anxiety, but let's break it down.

Because separation related problems can be based indiffering emotional systems. So we have the potential for frustration. And when we say about frustration, remember we need to be thinking about frustration of what?

What is it that we are frustrating, which of the systems is not being successful. So desire seeking, that's the positive engaging emotion associated with social company and also other resources, but in this context, social company and frustration of fear, anxiety, and panic grief, as I mentioned earlier, the emotion associated with loss of access to a nurturing source and then the potential for anxiety, the one that everybody thinks about, but it is one of the potential motivations. So, let's look at how we might reduce the risk of those 3 emotional triggers as these animals start to go into a different phase of the pandemic.

Well, when we're thinking about frustration, we need to think about setting realistic expectations, because frustration happens when there's an expectation to be able to successfully express an emotion and that's being thwarted in some way. For panic grief, we need to think about reducing dependency on being nurtured, and there's a difference between nurturing social interaction and companionship. So we're looking at the intensity of the nurturing component because companionship is related to the desire seeking motivation to have social interaction when someone's nurturing another it's related to the care system.

And then anxiety, we need to think about increasing self-confidence because self-confidence reduces the probability of anxiety by creating a greater dependence on your own information and not worrying so much about the rest of the, the environment, social or physical, and how much information you can gain from that if you are in an anxious state. So let's look at setting realistic expectations in order to reduce the risk of frustration. So frustration of desire seeking is the first one to think about.

So we want to think about how we're going to prepare these dogs as we change our lifestyle, to not have any unreasonable or unrealistic expectations of their desire seeking system being satisfied through human contact. And then when we think about frustration of fear anxiety, we need to think about how we are going to enable dogs that have fear anxiety states to be able to resolve them themselves, to have coping strategies to deal with that level of fear anxiety. So in terms of prevention of frustration of desire seeking, we want to remember that that desire seeking is motivated by social company and having a a constant supply certainly could have led to a positive emotional bias during the pandemic and indeed it did and.

That's what we see in the research that people felt that their animals were, especially the dogs, I can talk about cats in another presentation, but the dogs were in a better state. They had a better quality of life because of the fact that they were able to have access to social company. But preparing for the removal of that constant company is going to be really important because that's not a realistic level of human interaction for the majority of domestic dogs.

So some of them, because working from home is not over yet, and I don't think it ever will be, we're certainly moving towards much more of a hybrid form of working. I think homework is here to stay for many, many people, but certainly constant company, which happened during the pandemic, is not likely to continue. People, even if they continue to work from home, are likely to resume more normal social lives, for example.

Additional triggers for desire seeking which were provided by the caregivers, so people were more likely to play, more likely to give food treats. I applied to cats and dogs. We're going to talk about cats, say, more specifically in the final presentation of the.

But giving treats, giving social interaction via object play, which is another trigger for the desire seeking system, also raised expectation of that system being able to be satisfied through human company. So we need to limit the intensity and duration of these interactions which are associated with desire seeking, not remove them, but make sure that the intensity and the duration becomes more realistic, thinking about providing and sticking to some sort of routine where there are predictive cues where individuals can know when. Social interaction through object play or through just social contact is going to be available so discriminating stimuli to signal periods of when this sort of interaction may be available can be helpful in setting more realistic expectations, expectations that can be met and therefore frustration can be reduced.

Also thinking about structuring periods of solitude into the day, so thinking in this period of transition, we're not quite back to normal yet, thinking about how we're going to start to introduce periods of solitude because these changes. Can't be made quickly if we actually take away contact suddenly and abruptly, we're far more likely to induce frustration because that expectation is not being met and also to increase the level of fear anxiety as well. So if we can, we want to start well in advance of our return to work dates.

Now we're getting a little bit later now in the progression of the pandemic. Many people are already at work or going back to work, but as with as much preparation as we can, we want to advise caregivers to think about the fact that their routine's going to change and try to do that gradually. And also think about ways in which we can enhance desire seeking associations that are associated with being alone, so rather than that desire seeking motivation being mediated so intensely as it was during lockdown by humans and by the play and object play, etc.

That they provided. To think about how dogs can create desire seeking associations on their own, things like stuffed kongs, for example, toy availability, self play, and playing with objects alone rather than directed through a human caregiver. And then we said that we needed to set realistic expectations to prevent frustration of the fear anxiety system as well.

So we need to remember that fear anxiety leads to 4 potential valence dependent behavioural responses. So there are those that are designed to increase distance from whatever's worrying you and stop interaction with that potential threat, which we talk about in the sync model as avoidance and repulsion. So avoidance being where The individual takes action to achieve the aim of increasing distance and decreasing interaction, repulsion being where the individual behaves in a way that induces the trigger of their fear anxiety to take the action.

So they are the one, the trigger is the one that increases distance and decreases interaction. And then we have the potential for behavioural responses which are designed to increase availability of information, so we call the passive gathering of information in the sync model we refer to as inhibition and the active exchanging of information with another, with the with the the the the trigger for that protective emotional state being referred to as appeasement. So inhibition and appeasement, often for dogs who are socially obligate, will involve gathering that information either passively or actively, from a human caregiver.

And during the pandemic when we were available in a much more consistent form, then being able to gather information passively so these dogs are all gathering information from their caregivers, so using their visual, their auditory input, also using their olfactory input, so they're watching, staring, listening, sniffing, making sure that they are gathering information, but they're doing so in a passive manner. So lying there, not actively interacting, or appeasement where they are doing it far more actively by leaning or by licking in order to try and gain access to more cent information. These behaviours directed towards people are likely to have been of much higher frequency just through the opportunity during the pandemic.

So when the caregiver was was present constantly, the expectation that a human will always be there to provide that information is likely to be increased. So how we respond to information gathering is going to be crucially important because as the pandemic eases and we go back to this so-called normal life, that availability is going to be reduced. So how do we respond to information gathering when it's occurring?

Well, it's very important never to reject or ignore a dog who is asking. We wouldn't do that to a human who was in need of support, so rejecting and ignoring will increase anxiety. It will make the individual feel unsupported, alone, and lacking in the ability to resolve their fear anxiety.

So that system is likely to be enhanced, but also likely to lead to frustration, particularly where there is a previous expectation that the person will provide the information. So don't reject or ignore. So what do we do?

We want to provide a trickle of information, just enough information, as this mother is doing here, not ignoring the small child, but also not fully engaging with the small child because she's actually trying to work from home. But she's giving enough information to ensure that the child feels supported and get some contact and information but not so much as to increase the level of dependency on that information to feel safe. And the same with our dogs and cats, giving them just a a a recognition that they are not being ignored, that you are available if they really do need you, but that they don't really need you as much as they think they do.

So trying to give just enough information. And not too much, not over supplying. The problem with oversupplying of information is it actually reduces confidence.

So if you're given the information too readily, if you're rescued from situations, then you don't learn to find your own solutions. We also need to remember that the information we do give needs to be helpful. It needs to be information that actually increases the sensation of security and safety and reduces the perception that anxiety is the right response.

And unfortunately because of miscommun between our species, we can sometimes inadvertently be giving information that increases their uncertainty. So things like hugging and cuddling and kissing, which in dog terms are signs of appeasement, mean that we are now seeking information from them, which will make them. Perceive that the environment is unsafe and needs to be checked.

So being really careful about how we provide that information is going to be important in preventing rising levels of anxiety. Reducing expectation of availability also is important in reducing the frustration associated with not being able to gather information from humans, and we need to do this gradually. So we, again, we don't want to just immediately remove our accessibility in terms of being their information source.

We want to do it gradually, we might use things. Like, visual barriers, so physical barriers that allow visual contact, we may have proximity but not contact. These are ways that we can gradually wean off that level of expectation and providing a signal of return so that, and reassurance that we are going to be coming back.

So that information source has not gone forever. Helping to reduce underlying protective emotions also involves increasing self-confidence, and this is particularly important in reducing the fear anxiety motivational system and particularly anxiety, which is the anticipatory form of that emotion. Also, if we have higher levels of self-confidence, that also reduces dependency, makes it less likely that the animal will be dependent on the human's presence in order to solve its problems.

So resisting the temptation to overdirect is important. This is something that has been affected by the pandemic, so in terms of that one of the things we saw in the data was that. And people admitted they were spending more time with their dogs.

They were also possibly engaging in more training, and it depends what that training is doing. If training is about increasing good decision making on the part of the dog, increasing, yes, compliance with verbal cues, but not involving overdirection. Then it can be very beneficial, but in animals who have a tendency to be anxious, it's very important to get that balance right between ability to respond to cues for safety and management purposes that are important for the welfare of the dog and the caregiver and for legal reasons, but also giving them the ability to make choices and to be reinforced for appropriate decision making.

And we also want to think about increasing the perception of personal safety for the individual within the home, and within the home on their own eventually, so within the home, not mediated through the caregiver. So things like adaptty and fell away, the pheromone. Communication to help with that, things like environmental needs being met.

So illustration here of cats with high up resting places which have got a slight indentation in them, that curved shelving that allows them to feel a sensation of being safe and secure. Utraceuticals may be helpful as well to encourage a positive emotional bias in these animals as they are in this transition period. So things like I've put out adapty Express there but hot off the press, we now have an adapt to chew rather than adapt to express.

So I haven't hadn't actually got updated a photo there of the adapty tube product. I've only just received them very recently, so. Nutricom, Ear, Acita, Carmade, they're all based on this nutraceutical approach and the adapty chew product, the same to promote serotonin, dopamine, and GABA, and there are, I say, various products available.

We could be thinking in this movement out, this transition away from the pandemic, thinking about giving support to vulnerable individuals by using these products. Do we want to think about using medication for limiting the emotional impact of these changes? Well, yes, certainly that might be something that's necessary for some individuals.

So if we think about the challenge of being alone, we may want to use rapid. Onset medications, medications that take action in a relatively short period of time, a matter of hours, and can be used more as an as needed. We might think about these being given, for example, an hour before the animal needs to be left alone.

They are not the only thing that needs to be done. All these other things we talked about about changing expectation are also important, but medication. Can play a role.

And of course, we may also think for some of these individuals that we need to give a more long term help in terms of medication to increase positive emotional bias. Now remember, these medications generally have a lag time to effect, sometimes it's as much as 4 to 6 weeks, and we need an emotional diagnosis so that we know which of the neurotransmitters we need to aim to alter. So primarily we're thinking about serotonergic or dopaminergic, not exclusively no adrenaline is also important.

We may use medications that have a neurorenergic compound component as well. We've got cloidine as well, which can be used situationally, which has primarily no adrenergic effect. So yes, medication, nutraceuticals, pheromones, environmental changes, all of these things may be part of our transition programme of the advice that we're giving to caregivers as we come out of the pandemic.

The other thing to think about is the potential for physical health issues to be associated with the situation of negative emotional bias. We talked about the mucosal services, the immune function, etc. Previously.

So thinking about things like nutraceuticals and. Probiotics that might be helpful in the transition as well. And obviously this is going to depend very much as well on taking a history, looking at whether there's been any gut impact.

For example, we know that the gut is so important for production of serotonin, so any compromised gut function could be relevant to the animals who are coming out of lockdown. And then we need to think about arousal as well as valence. So in the sink model we talk about the valence being the taps and whether you've got this positive or negative bias, but arousal is likened in my sink analogy to the amount of water in the sink.

And one of the things we need to think about with these dogs as they're transitioning is that we want them to have the lowest possible level of residual emotion in their sink. And to do that, we want to have good emotional drainage. So for dogs, that's about allowing them the opportunity to engage in chewing and sleeping.

And you know, I remember that in one of the studies that we talked about earlier, one of the negative impacts that was highlighted by caregivers was the fact they felt their dogs didn't have enough downtime, enough individual time or time to themselves. And that can seriously impact on the amount of good quality REM sleep that the individual is actually having, and we know that dogs need, as adults, between 16 and 18 hours. Of sleep in 24, and that's sleep, not just rest.

So during the pandemic, very likely that with all that increased activity within households, that there was actually quite a, a reduction in opportunity for good quality sleep. And therefore, if we think about as they're coming out of the pandemic and we're trying to reduce that arousal, making sure they have provision for good quality sleep is going to be important. And then finally I want to just talk in the last 10 minutes or so about this reaction to new normal.

So there are things in our society post pandemic that are now part of our normal world, and although that has eased quite recently in the UK and we've had The the apparent stopping of restrictions, we do still have some differences. People are still aware that the virus is very much still with us, so things like face coverings and social distancing are still happening and people are still complying with those sorts of guidelines. So the pandemic isn't over, the virus is still here and so leaving lockdown isn't about going back to something which is totally familiar.

We're going out away from lockdown into something that's still potentially different as far as our. A concern, so say social distancing still being something that's around, we've still got these perspex barriers in shops, and we've still got people wearing face masks, maybe not at this sort of level anymore but still happening. So, as lockdown eases, the environment will be different for our pets, as well as for ourselves.

People with face coverings can be very significant, particularly for dogs who rely a lot on facial recognition as part of the way in which they communicate. So facial recognition, reading of facial signals is very important, and lack of facial signals can create a lot of fear anxiety. It's one of the reasons why dogs sometimes have problems with other forms of face coverings, so things like burkas, for example, and that can cause issues of fear, anxiety and reaction to people of certain appearances because the face is not readily available for the dog to take signals from.

But some coverings may actually be easier for an individual to adjust to than others, so there are all sorts of different types of face coverings, so we can see that some of these have more availability of facial information and may be easier for dogs to cope with, but for all of the coverings, what's important is how we introduce them. Now, obviously for pandemic puppies, they have always really seen people with face coverings. It may be that it's more part of their normal world than it is for the dogs who were introduced to them during the pandemic.

But the difference as we come out of lockdown is it's not just their own caregivers that they're seeing with masks. They're likely to be seeing more unusual people, strangers, unfamiliar people with face coverings. So if we get a new pet, obviously we want to introduce them to a face covering right from day one.

If we've got a pet who is already established, we may want to do more actual proactive training. This is a very quick video from my head rehab trainer Laura, just showing how to introduce a face covering to her dog Bracken. Oops.

When she says mark, it's that good word that's the marker. OK, so introduction, obviously if dogs already have anxiety related problems, we need to remember that it may be more difficult to do the introduction to things such as face coverings, and we need to consider whether what we're aiming for is a temporary change in their reaction for. Particular event or whether we're looking to get a more long term change in their association with these stimuli and that, I guess depends on on what's happening now because we're starting to come out in a slightly more further away from these restrictions and face masks are becoming less common.

Temporary change is going to be achieved by just changing the predominant emotion. So behavioural output is the result of the predominant emotional motivation. It doesn't mean that the other motivation is not present.

So we can use food, we can use play, we can trigger engaging emotions, and that engaging emotion can then make the animal give a more favourable behavioural output. And we use this technique with, dogs, for example, that. Worried about cars.

So here we've got this dog with treat trail on the pavement while the cars going past. The dog is still fearful and anxious of cars, or at the vets, the dog is still fearful and anxious of the vets, but at that moment in time, the presence of the trigger for the positive emotion is the higher trigger, the predominant trigger, and therefore the animal is coping, is showing a preferable behavioural response in that moment in time. So the other emotions are still present.

The protective emotions of the trigger hasn't gone away, but it's temporarily not the predominant emotion. Now obviously this is something we need to be very aware of, and I don't know if you're aware of this ridiculous challenge that was on social media showing this idea of putting peanut butter on your head while you clip your dog's claws. One of the big problems with this is a total lack of recognition of the fact that the fear anxiety response of the claw clipping is still present.

Yes, at that moment, as they're looking at the peanut butter, there is an increase in their desire seeking motivation for the peanut butter, but that fear anxiety, as we can see from the body language of these individual dogs, so look at their eyes and their ear positions, they are still in a protective emotional state because of the claw clipping. And as soon as that food has gone or if something else happens to push that protective trigger, then that you could actually see a very sudden change in behavioural response and we don't want that that close to anybody's face or head. So really important when we're thinking about temporary change in And behavioural output that we remember that the other emotion is still present.

So it can be effective though for dealing with things like unexpected exposure to face coverings, and that is probably something that is more likely to be an issue going forward because of the fact that we're not seeing them perhaps as regularly as we once were. It doesn't create any long lasting association. But if it's the aim to just temporarily enable the animal to cope with the exposure to the face covering and get the emotional balance right, then that is something we can do, and we need to make sure we do so with the emotional arousal, not.

Too high, so the animal can actually learn from that. So exposure to facial coverings when they're in a negative state leads to sensitization, so we do need to make sure that we are setting them up to get the right association. So generally what we're doing with anything that is at the moment inducing protective emotions, so we've got a face covering causing a fear, anxiety response and then leading to an unwanted behavioural response like barking or growling at somebody and the potential for there to be an injury.

So that's what we're trying to check. Change, we think about wanting the animal to have the opposite emotional response, so to be in a pleasurable, relaxed emotional state, and we know that food or play or company can induce that different positive, engaging emotional bias. So what we're going to do is we're going to think about how we put those things together.

But in order to make it work, we need the top arrow as illustrated here, to be stronger than the bottom arrow so that we get the association in this direction. So first of all, we're going to think about how we're going to enhance that connection. So we're aiming for that acceptable behavioural response.

Of course we've got to make sure that the animal is safe, so we might do things like use muzzles or have them on leads or those sorts of things whilst we're doing the treatment, so muzzling when they're at the vets or shutting the dog in another room when a visitor arrives, if we think about expanding this to other situations. We want to reward relaxation, so we're going to reward the association between food and being relaxed, so things like giving them a stuffedong or something like that. We're going to also change their emotional arousal level, which we've already talked about this evening, encouraging drainage and making sure we limit their negative input and also reduce any unwanted reinforcement, anything that's encouraging that negative association.

And then we can dilute and introduce the face covering repeatedly in order to create that new association. And this is obviously much more long term and whether we're going to do that with face coverings will depend on how common they're going to be as we go further into the recovery phase. And then finally dealing with changes in social activity.

During lockdown we had a lot of increased activity that people were walking as a way to leave the house. We have more activity around houses often, and then we might start to change activity now because of people going back to school and back to work, and that was challenging during lockdown, but is likely to also be challenging now. So we want to think about emotional management for those dogs, reintroducing them gradually to these changes in social interaction.

The social distancing has the potential to trigger fear anxiety because we behave differently. I don't know if you can see in this video, but this is just somebody who's going to quite extremes to create social distancing. Can you imagine how unusual and novel that looks if you're a dog and people are walking around like that.

Now again, social distancing now has started to reduce, but people are still cautious and do and are more likely to take avoiding action, things that dogs may find unusual. So there's a potential for these socially obligate dogs to be frustrated because they have high expectations of getting to other dogs or getting to people, and they therefore can't do that as readily. They're going to get more frustrated.

And therefore we might want to think about where we're walking, gradually increasing exposure to areas, gradually reintroducing social contact with other dogs, exercising with friends, whilst obviously being respectful of other people's social distancing requirements, but allowing them to have social contact with other dogs and with familiar people. So what we've talked about this evening is the fact that the COVID pandemic has been a challenge. It's been a challenge for us as humans, and it's also been a challenge for our pets.

The impact is likely to be felt for a very long time to come. We touched on that last week when we talked about this generation of puppies that may actually have quite a lot of risk factors going forward. But we also need to remember that there's likely to be impact on the dogs who were present before the pandemic as we make these transitions and changes back to normal life.

So, as we're moving into this different phase, we need to think about not only how that's impacting on us, but also how it's impacting on the dogs we share our lives with. And I've just got some information here if anybody is experiencing, I'm hearing a lot from general practitioners that you are getting a lot of more inquiries from caregivers about emotional impact about behavioural change. So if you.

Are interested in being able to get access to behavioural advice or if you want to think about behavioural referral then there are contact details there. It is a challenge at the moment everyone's inundated and there are long waiting lists sadly. But if therefore, that's why I've also put up about the, behavioural advice subscription service in case getting advice may actually be something that would be useful for the practise so that you can give help and support to your caregivers and your patients.

Thank you.