Paws for Pedigrees

30th January 2013 - Christina Hunt in Health

What role do vets, pedigree dog breeders and puppy buyers play in promoting pedigree dog health? This is a question I frequently ask myself.

My name is Christina Hunt and I am a PhD student with the Centre for Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine at The University of Nottingham’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Science. Over the last year I have been conducting a survey of vets and pedigree dog breeders in the UK, with the aim of exploring participants’ attitudes towards pedigree dog breeding, canine hereditary disease and current health screening programmes. Ultimately my aim is to explore the influence of these factors on pedigree dog health. I would like to share with you some of my research experiences, the highs, the lows and what Paws for Pedigrees is all about.

Questionnaire

This research began in May 2011, when I embarked on developing a questionnaire for both vets and pedigree dog breeders to collect information on both parties’ attitudes to pedigree dog health and related topics. This was a mammoth task and I faced a number of challenges. It struck me that whilst this topic is frequently discussed, there is no published literature on vets’ and breeders’ attitudes to pedigree health.

I am sure you will agree that those of us with a passion for dogs and particularly our own dogs can talk the hind leg off a donkey (followed by the three subsequent legs and probably the ears too). Therefore it was particularly important that the questionnaire was carefully constructed to enable vets and breeders to give us their personal views on this topic. In the autumn of 2011 the questionnaire was distributed to vets, as well as a random selection of Champdogs breeders. Overall it received good feedback, although we did receive some criticism too. I remember reading a quote once that said ‘problems are a sign of progress’ and I believe this to be true and also very applicable to conducting questionnaire based research.

Group Interviews

The second stage of our research over the last year was to conduct group interviews for vets and breeders to talk about the findings of the questionnaire. In this phase of the research, breeders truly came up trumps and we were able to collect data from two breeders’ focus groups. Vets however proved to be a lot trickier to get together. But last week, after seven months of trying, I managed to hold one vets focus group having kindly been invited to crash a staff meeting at a pub! If I have learnt anything in the last year it has been that flexibility is required at times and good things come to those who wait!

In the last year we have come a long way. The vets’ and breeders’ questionnaire is now closed, we have enough data from our breeders’ focus groups and we need to complete one more vets focus group before we can progress to the next stage of surveying owners.

To date this research has been a real success and we hope this will continue. We are still in the process of analysing our data but some interesting ideas appear to be emerging and we look forward to feeding these back to everyone and ultimately publishing our findings as the research progresses.

We would like to thank the Champdogs breeders and vets who have taken the time to assist us and support this important research. Without their help this work would simply not be possible and we are very grateful for your enthusiasm, time and feedback.

What else is in the Paws for Pedigrees pipeline?

We have now launched our Paws for Pedigrees Owners questionnaire to add to the data we have already collected from vets and breeders.

Click Here to complete the questionnaire and assist with our research

We also have plans for the promotion of better puppy buyer education. Watch this space!

Want to know more?

For more information visit us at Paws 4 Pedigrees or email Christina Hunt at paws4pedigrees@nottingham.ac.uk