Dogs' Behavioural Responses to Dog-Assisted Interventions: A Field Study

Animal-assisted services (AASs) are increasingly integrated into healthcare, education, and social support settings. However, empirical evidence on the emotional well-being of participating dogs remains limited. This study investigates how dog, session, handler, and client factors influence dogs' affective states during animal-assisted activities (AAAs), education (AAE), coaching (AAC), and therapy (AAT). A total of 837 sessions involving 63 dogs and 30 handlers were observed, with behavioural scoring and statistical analyses used to analyse the data. Principal Component Analysis then identified key affective components, including playfulness, comfort, anxiety, and uncertainty, which explained 45-61% of the variance. Session circumstances, as well as the characteristics of handlers, clients, and individual dogs-including age, experience, and gender-significantly influenced dogs' responses. Specifically, older dogs were less playful but more settled, while experience was linked to positive affect in AAAs and AAT, but not in AAC. Female dogs demonstrated increased uncertainty and arousal in AAAs and AAE. The impact of session length varied by context. In AAC, unfamiliar handlers increased tension. Additionally, younger clients were associated with heightened uncertainty or tension in dogs across AAAs, AAC, and AAE. In light of these findings, optimising dog welfare requires matching dogs to suitable roles, attentive session planning, and managing workload.