The School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Life Sciences Centre, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.
PLoS One. 2021 Apr 14;16(4):e0249191. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249191. eCollection 2021.
Medical Alert Dogs (MADs) are a promising support system for a variety of medical conditions. Emerging anecdotal reports suggest that dogs may alert to additional health conditions and different people other than those that they were trained for or initially began alerting. As the use of medical alert dogs increases, it is imperative that such claims are documented empirically. The overall aims of this study were to record the proportion of MAD owners who have a dog that alerts to multiple health conditions or to people other than the target person and to determine whether any sociodemographic variables were associated with dogs alerting to multiple conditions, multiple people, or both. MAD owners completed an online survey that contained a series of forced choice questions. Sixty-one participants reported a total of 33 different conditions to which dogs alerted. Eighty-four percent of participants reported that their dog alerted to multiple conditions and 54% reported that their dog alerted to multiple people. This is the first study to document that a large percentage of people report that their MAD alerts to multiple conditions and/or to multiple people. We present a discussion of how these alerting abilities could develop, but questions about the underlying mechanisms remain.
医疗辅助犬（MADs）是一种有前途的支持系统，可用于多种医疗状况。新兴的轶事报道表明，狗可能会对其他健康状况和除了它们受过训练或最初开始预警的人以外的人发出警报。随着医疗辅助犬的使用增加，必须通过经验证据来记录这些说法。本研究的总体目标是记录报告有多只狗对多种健康状况或对目标人物以外的人发出警报的 MAD 犬主人的比例，并确定是否有任何社会人口统计学变量与狗对多种状况、多种人或两者都有联系。MAD 犬主人完成了一项在线调查，其中包含一系列强制选择问题。61 名参与者报告了狗总共对 33 种不同的状况发出警报。84%的参与者报告说他们的狗对多种状况发出警报，54%的参与者报告说他们的狗对多种人发出警报。这是第一项记录大量人报告说他们的 MAD 犬对多种状况和/或对多种人发出警报的研究。我们提出了一个关于这些预警能力如何发展的讨论，但关于潜在机制的问题仍然存在。
