Smith Gareth, Wills Alison P
Department of Animal and Agriculture, Hartpury University, Gloucestershire, UK.
Vet Med Sci. 2025 May;11(3):e70399. doi: 10.1002/vms3.70399.
The popularity of brachycephalic dog breeds has increased over the last decade despite their numerous health issues. The continued popularity of these breeds raises questions about public understanding and perception of their health problems.
This study aimed to determine the impact of a minimalist educational intervention on public awareness of the health of brachycephalic breeds and attitudes to breeding practices.
Data were collected via an online questionnaire that assessed awareness of health issues and attitudes to breeding brachycephalic breeds before and after an educational intervention. The intervention consisted of a factsheet that survey participants were required to read. Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to test for an effect of dog ownership status (dog owner, owner of a brachycephalic breed, or not a dog owner) on perceptions, and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were used to test for the effect of the intervention on the perceptions of each individual group.
There were 141 survey responses obtained from owners of brachycephalic breeds (n = 41), owners of other breeds (n = 88), and non-dog owners (n = 12). The intervention significantly improved the awareness of breed-related health issues in owners of non-brachycephalic breeds (p < 0.001) and non-dog owners (p = 0.016) but not in owners of brachycephalic dogs (p = 0.581). Owners of non-brachycephalic breeds significantly reduced their support for breeding brachycephalic dogs following the intervention (p < 0.001), but there was no significant effect on participants who did not own a dog (p = 0.059) or who owned a brachycephalic breed (p = 0.359).
This study has demonstrated that education can change public perception of breed-specific health issues and attitudes to continued breeding of brachycephalic dogs. However, attitudes of owners of these breeds appear to be less easily influenced than people who do not already own these dogs. Therefore, further work is needed to understand the motivations for breed ownership and the continued popularity of brachycephalic dogs.
尽管短头犬品种存在诸多健康问题，但在过去十年中其受欢迎程度仍在上升。这些品种持续受欢迎引发了关于公众对其健康问题的理解和认知的疑问。
本研究旨在确定一种极简教育干预措施对公众对短头犬品种健康的认知以及对繁殖行为态度的影响。
通过在线问卷收集数据，该问卷评估了教育干预前后对健康问题的认知以及对短头犬品种繁殖的态度。干预措施包括一份要求调查参与者阅读的情况说明书。使用Kruskal-Wallis检验来测试养狗状况（狗主人、短头犬品种的主人或非狗主人）对认知的影响，使用Wilcoxon符号秩检验来测试干预措施对每个个体组认知的影响。
从短头犬品种的主人（n = 41）、其他品种的主人（n = 88）和非狗主人（n = 12）那里共获得了141份调查回复。干预措施显著提高了非短头犬品种的主人（p < 0.001）和非狗主人（p = 0.016）对品种相关健康问题的认知，但对短头犬品种的主人没有显著影响（p = 0.581）。非短头犬品种的主人在干预后显著减少了对繁殖短头犬的支持（p < 0.001），但对没有养狗的参与者（p = 0.059）或拥有短头犬品种的参与者（p = 0.359）没有显著影响。
本研究表明，教育可以改变公众对特定品种健康问题的认知以及对短头犬持续繁殖的态度。然而，这些品种的主人的态度似乎比尚未拥有这些狗的人更难受到影响。因此，需要进一步开展工作以了解品种拥有的动机以及短头犬持续受欢迎的原因。
