Marking frequency during intraspecific socialization sessions is related to urinary cortisol levels in shelter dogs

Abstract

Examination of social behaviour is very important for screening shelter dogs to be placedfor adoption or for identifying dogs that need behavioural intervention. Shelter shouldprovide behavioural rehabilitation for fearful and un-socialized dogs in order to increasetheir chances of adoption. Intraspecific socialization should be an important component ofbehavioural rehabilitation of un-socialized dogs. Intraspecific social exposure sessionscould be useful to modulate undesirable behaviour in owned dogs (Distefano andAlberghina, 2016) but also to increase social behaviour and working ability in militarydogs (Gfrerer et al., 2018). Urinary cortisol:creatinine ratio (C/Cr) is probably the mostwidely used physiological indicator, which is reported in published studies about caninewelfare (Hewson et al., 2007) but individual variability and lack of specificity as a stressresponse have led researchers to question the value of glucocorticoid levels as a welfareindicator (Part et al., 2014). In this study, we hypothesized that social exposure sessionscould affect cortisol and behaviours, such as urinary and faecal marking, in shelter dogs. animal shelter dogs.