Stress-related behaviours displayed by Search and Rescue dogs are not influenced by frequency of training sessions and trainer experience

In Italy, Search and Rescue dogs can be trained by professionals (e.g. mountain rescue of custom police) or by volunteers. Professionals train their dogs on a daily base with the goal to reach a prompt response to obedience commands and an accurate detection rate. Whereas, volunteers work as an aide of the state forces, they train their dogs once a week. Volunteers are private owners with no professional experience in training dogs. The aim of this study was to explore whether stress-related behaviours in Search and Rescue dogs were affected by frequency of training sessions and expertise of the trainer. The behaviour of 30 dogs of different breeds and gender (16 males and 14 females) during an obedience training session (the same sequence for all the subjects) was video-recorded. Dogs were divided in two groups: volunteers (N=20) and professionals (N=10). Subjects’ inclusion criteria: have passed a basic obedience exam and being operative as canine unit. Training sessions were carried out in a familiar environment for all the subjects. An ethogram of dog stress-related behaviors was derived from literature. Videos were analysed using Solomon Coder: frequency and duration of 20 stress-related behaviours were continuously recorded. Mann Whitney U test was conducted to determine differences between groups. The duration of panting, back ears and tail tuck displayed by dogs were 56±34, 36±35 and 19±25 seconds respectively. Look away from the trainer and lip licking were the most frequent stress related behaviours with 11±5 and 5±4 times per training session, respectively. These last two behaviours were mostly displayed when the dogs were directly approached by their trainers after they were asked to lay down/sit and stay. No statistical differences were found in any behaviour between the two groups (Mann Whitney U test, P>0.05). Our results showed that the frequency of training and expertise of the trainer did not influence the presence of stress-related behaviours in dogs. Further analysis should be conducted to investigate whether the response of dogs to commands vary between groups.