An anti-barking muzzle for dogs and its short-term effects on behaviour and saliva cortisol concentrations

 A commercial anti-barking muzzle for dogs was tested during winter on Australian Kelpies at a commercial breeding kennel, to examine the effects of the device on dog behaviour and welfare. The trial involved 16 dogs (paired on sex and age); one dog per pair was allocated at random to the Muzzle Treatment (MT) and the other to the Control Treatment (CT) (not muzzled). The dogs were penned individually with pairs housed in adjacent pens. Muzzle Treatment dogs wore the anti-barking device for about 43 h. Muzzles were removed for about 30 min on day 2 of the treatment period while dogs were fed. The behavioural responses of dogs were recorded over 4 days, from before application of muzzles (pre-treatment) to 2 days after removal of the muzzles (post-treatment period). Saliva samples were collected at 2, 21 and 24 h post-muzzling to measure saliva cortisol concentrations.


The initial response of dogs to wearing muzzles was to display submissive behaviour: tail held between the hind legs or down for the first few minutes only and head and tail down for the majority of time while wearing the muzzles, especially in the absence of humans. Activity level (2.3 versus 15.7% of observations), barking (0.1 versus 7.8%) and standing posture (8.3 versus 29.5%) by dogs were significantly reduced (P<0.05) while wearing the muzzles compared to non-muzzled controls. Even in response to stimulation from humans, dogs barked significantly less when muzzled compared to non-muzzled controls (0.5 versus 23.4% of observations, P<0.01). However, based on saliva cortisol concentrations there was no evidence of a physiological stress response to wearing the muzzles. After removal of the muzzles after 43 h of treatment, the dogs in the Muzzle compared to Control Treatment tended to stand more (P<0.06) during observation sessions over the next 2 days (48.3 versus 32.5% of observations). It was concluded that although dogs responded to wearing the muzzle by modifying their behaviour, including the display of submissive behaviour, and vocalisation, there was no indication that the dogs showed a stress response when wearing the muzzle. Further evaluation of anti-barking muzzles for dogs is recommended to test the ability of dogs to drink and pant while wearing the device during hot weather, to ensure they can effectively thermoregulate.

Introduction


Sixty-six percent of the 6 million Australian households have at least one pet and 40% of these pets are dogs. However, dogs in the general community can cause embarrassment and inconvenience to their owners. Excessive barking by dogs, for example, is a considerable social problem (Kobelt et al., 2003) often with extreme solutions, such as surgical “debarking” or euthanasia. “Anti-barking” muzzles may offer a solution to this problem. The device used in this trial was a commercial anti-barking muzzle which was made of elastic and cloth and designed to allow the dog to feed and drink while wearing it. The device was designed to impose pressure on the jaws of a barking dog and thereby tire the jaw muscles and inhibit barking. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the welfare implications of the device’s effects on the dog.


There are a number of ways in which the device could be used. However, it is most likely that at least initially such a device, if effective in reducing barking, would be valuable to dog owners who have animals that incessantly bark when family members are absent or during the evening. In such situations the device may be applied during the period in which the barking is expected, for example, during the day when the owner(s) is absent or during the evening when people are sleeping. The present experiments did not examine the effectiveness of the device as a training aid, but examined the most pressing issue: examining its effectiveness when the muzzle is worn for long periods, i.e. for those situations in which barking is expected. In such situations, it is important that the welfare of the dog is not seriously compromised. Thus, in the following experiments the device was tested when worn over about 2 days by dogs, some of which had a history of uncontrollable barking, in situations in which barking was stimulated. While this use was atypical, it was chosen on the basis that if problems were not to arise in this scenario, they would be unlikely to arise if the device was to be used for shorter periods.


There has been disagreement over what is important for the welfare of animals and this has led to attempts to study and conceptualise animal welfare in more scientific ways (Duncan and Fraser, 1997). The most recognised approach within scientific circles in assessing risks to the welfare of animals involves studying whether the animal’s biological systems are functioning in a normal or satisfactory manner. This approach, which is often called the “functioning-based” approach (Duncan and Fraser, 1997) or the “homeostasis” approach (Barnett et al., 2001), is underpinned by the definition that “the welfare of an individual is its state as regards its attempts to cope with its environment” (Broom, 1986). While there are some limitations to this approach, this approach has the most scientific credibility and has been used by many scientists to assess welfare (Hemsworth and Coleman, 1998).


There are examples in the literature of examining short-term challenges to animals using this approach. Lay et al. (1992) studied the behavioural and physiological responses of cattle to two branding procedures to assess the relative aversiveness of the procedures. Hemsworth et al. (1996) utilised behavioural and physiological responses together with growth performance to assess the welfare implications of a husbandry procedure regularly imposed (daily injections) on pigs. Ogburn et al. (1998) measured behaviour and some physiological responses including cortisol concentrations, heart rate and blood pressure in dogs to compare the effects of neck and head collars. In the present experiments we examined the risks to welfare of dogs of wearing the an anti-barking muzzle, utilising the functioning-based or homeostasis approach, in which behaviours indicative of maladaption and an element of the stress response were measured.

Section snippets

Materials and methods


Two experiments were conducted at a commercial dog breeding kennel, about 100 km west of Melbourne in central Victoria, involving a total of 16 Australian Kelpies. All dogs except one (in the Muzzle treatment (MT)) had been trained and displayed at dog shows. The experiments were each conducted in two time replicates (weeks) with eight dogs per replicate. Due to difficulties in assaying the saliva samples from experiment 1, this aspect of the experiment was repeated. The repeated experiment

Initial reactions of dogs to wearing the muzzle from the video records


Muzzling resulted in four of the eight Muzzle Treatment dogs almost immediately lowering their tail between the legs, although their tails were only held in this position for less than 30 s. The predominant tail position for all eight muzzled dogs over the first 15 min of wearing the muzzle was “down” compared to “raised”. In addition, there were very few instances of tail wagging over the 15 min. Initially, the dogs’ ears tended to be “back” but within 1 min of being muzzled, ears reverted to the

Discussion


The anti-barking device significantly reduced the occurrence of barking by dogs. While the changes to activity level and standing posture recorded for dogs wearing the muzzle were relatively large compared to the pre-treatment period and the Control Treatment, there were no apparent adverse effects of wearing the muzzle, for example, on self-damaging behaviours, lacerations or saliva cortisol response.


The measurements on saliva cortisol taken during these experiments provide no evidence of a

Conclusion


While dogs showed a reduction in activity including barking when wearing the anti-barking device, there were no significant changes in behaviours that were indicative of a painful or aversive stimulus, such as sustained, vigorous attempts to remove the stimulus. Furthermore, there were no significant changes in saliva cortisol concentrations. However, the environmental conditions under which the experiments were conducted were limited. One obvious area of potential concern and need for further


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