Abilities of Canine Shelter Behavioral Evaluations and Owner Surrender Profiles to Predict Resource Guarding in Adoptive Homes.

ABSTRACT: Some shelters in the United States consider dogs identified as food aggressive during behavioral evaluations to be unadoptable. We surveyed adopters of dogs from a New York shelter to examine predictive abilities of shelter behavioral evaluations and owner surrender profiles. Twenty of 139 dogs (14.4%) were assessed as resource guarding in the shelter. We found statistically significant associations between shelter assessment as resource guarding and guarding reported in the adoptive home for three situations: taking away toys, bones or other valued objects; taking away food; and retrieving items or food taken by the dog. Similarly, owner descriptions of resource guarding on surrender profiles significantly predicted guarding in adoptive homes. However, positive predictive values for all a

SUBMITTER: McGuire B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7552731 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature