Christie Keith
Are pets calmer and less stressed without their owners present during veterinary exams? A recent study partially funded by Fear Free sheds some light on this often-controversial subject.
There’s a lot of disagreement among veterinary professionals on how to interpret the emotional cues displayed by pets when removed from their owners. Many pet parents also object to having their pets taken away to a treatment area. While this practice was extremely common during the COVID pandemic, it was a normal part of many veterinary visits before lockdown became a household word and continues to be today as well.
The reason many veterinary team members offer for the practice is that pets seem calmer and easier to handle when separated from their owners. Others say this isn’t because their fear, anxiety, and stress (FAS) are reduced but because the pet is shutting down out of fear and/or in a state of learned helplessness. What exactly is the effect of separation from owners and transport to a different room during a veterinary visit on a pet’s FAS?
In a study published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, researchers conducted a prospective non-blinded randomized two-period two-treatment crossover trial with 21 healthy adult cats. Each cat received an initial examination with their owner present to establish a baseline, and then they were divided into two groups. The cats were chosen from patients of a university veterinary teaching hospital’s wellness and dental care service and had previously been seen without any history of needing “undue restraint,” sedation, or anxiolytics to be examined.
The first group of cats received an examination in a treatment area without their owner, and the second received an examination in an exam room with their owner present. The actual order of the exam itself was randomized, and handling techniques described as “low-stress” were utilized. All veterinary team members had completed Fear Free certification to standardize handling and assessment.
The examining veterinarians recorded heart rate (HR) as measured by auscultation and also established a FAS score for each cat. The baseline HR for cats in the study averaged 176 beats per minute (BPM). For cats examined in the treatment area without their owners, mean HR was 226 bpm and 195 when measured in the exam room with owners present.
The most frequent values when measuring FAS scores were 3 at baseline (moderate stress), 4 in the exam room with owner present, and 5 in the treatment area without owner.
The authors wrote, “Results from this study indicate that minimizing transfer between examination areas and including the owner during wellness examinations can reduce some of the more overt signs of stress in cats during clinic visits. The data also suggest more proactive owner education measures may be of benefit, such as methods of owner habituation of their pet for transport and handling ahead of scheduled clinic visits.”
Note: This study was partially funded by Fear Free, which had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.
