van Herwijnen Ineke R, Vinke Claudia M, Arndt Saskia S, Roulaux Pascalle E M
Division of Animals in Science and Society, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Population Health Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Vet Anim Sci. 2024 Oct 16;26:100402. doi: 10.1016/j.vas.2024.100402. eCollection 2024 Dec.
Firework (noise) aversion is seen in cats and dogs relatively often and comes with a risk of animal welfare impairment. Affected animals may show behaviours like freezing, hiding, fleeing, but also inappropriate elimination, loss of appetite and (social) withdrawal. In The Netherlands, firework regulation has been a much-debated topic and we aimed to provide insight into how owners in this country report on their cat's or dog's firework aversion. We gathered reports on 3,009 dogs' and 622 cats' firework-related behaviours, exposure, animal (early life) characteristics and owner (dis)agreement with statements relating to firework aversion and animal guidance. We hypothesized that 1) suboptimal early life factors come with higher prevalence of firework aversion and 2) owners that report less firework aversion for their animal, agree more to the statement that owner behaviour affects an animal's future reactions to firework. Our findings confirm the first hypothesis for dogs and the second hypothesis for both species. Firework affects Dutch cats, dogs and their owners not just on New Year's Eve, but for multiple months a year: 64 % of the owners heard firework noise from September onwards. Suboptimal early life factors, of for instance not being noise habituated as a young animal came with higher prevalence of firework fear for dogs, but not cats and habituating particularly kittens seemed uncommon (4 % of kittens). Advice seeking was more common for dogs (54 %) than cats (23 %) with firework aversion. For both species reporting of lasting effects of therapeutic interventions was uncommon. <30 % of the most often applied interventions were reported to have a lasting mitigating effect on firework aversion. This may indicate a high importance of hereditary and early life preventive measures, but our respondents were not in high agreement with statements reflecting such importance. Although our study presents associative evidence only and was based on owner report, not on direct animal observations, we present attention points for future studies. One such attention point is a seemingly low awareness of the lifelong influence of an animal's early life factors. Studying how such awareness affects people that opt for a puppy or kitten as to facilitate acquisition decisions that may or may not come with firework resilient animals, may ultimately benefit animals that were in this study seen to experience firework aversion for multiple months a year, with limited long-term effectiveness of therapeutic interventions.
猫和狗中相对常见对烟花（噪音）厌恶的情况，这会带来损害动物福利的风险。受影响的动物可能会表现出如僵住、躲藏、逃窜等行为，还可能出现不适当排泄、食欲不振以及（社交）退缩等情况。在荷兰，烟花管制一直是备受争议的话题，我们旨在深入了解该国的宠物主人如何报告他们的猫或狗对烟花的厌恶情况。我们收集了3009只狗和622只猫与烟花相关的行为、接触情况、动物（早期生活）特征以及主人对与烟花厌恶和动物引导相关陈述的（不）认同情况。我们假设：1）早期生活因素欠佳会导致烟花厌恶的患病率更高；2）对自己的动物报告烟花厌恶程度较低的主人，更认同主人行为会影响动物未来对烟花反应的说法。我们的研究结果证实了关于狗的第一个假设以及关于两个物种的第二个假设。烟花不仅在新年前夜影响荷兰的猫、狗及其主人，而且一年中有多个月都会有影响：64%的主人从9月起就听到过烟花噪音。早期生活因素欠佳，比如幼年时未习惯噪音，会使狗对烟花恐惧的患病率更高，但对猫则不然，而且让小猫习惯噪音似乎并不常见（4%的小猫）。有烟花厌恶问题的狗（54%）比猫（23%）更常寻求建议。对于两个物种而言，报告治疗干预有持久效果的情况都不常见。据报告，最常用的干预措施中不到30%对烟花厌恶有持久的缓解作用。这可能表明遗传和早期生活预防措施非常重要，但我们的受访者对反映这种重要性的陈述并未高度认同。尽管我们的研究仅提供了关联证据，且基于主人的报告而非对动物的直接观察，但我们提出了未来研究的关注点。其中一个关注点是人们似乎对动物早期生活因素的终身影响认识不足。研究这种认识如何影响选择小狗或小猫的人，以便做出可能会或不会得到对烟花有抵抗力动物的购买决定，最终可能会使在本研究中被发现一年中有多个月经历烟花厌恶且治疗干预长期效果有限的动物受益。
