Anxiety assessment is the systematic determination of whether a companion animal is anxious, how severe that state is, and which situations elicit it. Its evidence base is twofold: owner-completed instruments validated for dogs and cats convert descriptions of everyday behaviour into quantitative scores for fear- and anxiety-related traits such as stranger-directed fear and separation-related behaviour, capturing relatively stable predispositions rather than momentary state[1][2], while salivary cortisol provides a non-invasive index of adrenocortical activity, although between-individual and between-occasion variation limits the interpretation of single samples[3]. Assessment must also separate anxiety from fear and phobia and identify the eliciting context, such as separation or noise[4].
- anxiety assessment
- owner-completed questionnaire
- salivary cortisol
- adrenocortical activity
- fear and phobia
References
- Yuying Hsu; James A. Serpell; Development and validation of a questionnaire for measuring behavior and temperament traits in pet dogs. J. Am. Vet. Med. Assoc. 2003, 223, 1293-1300, 10.2460/javma.2003.223.1293.
- Deborah L. Duffy; Roseana T. Diniz de Moura; James A. Serpell; Development and evaluation of the Fe-BARQ: A new survey instrument for measuring behavior in domestic cats (Felis s. catus). Behav. Process. 2017, 141, 329-341, 10.1016/j.beproc.2017.02.010.
- A.J Kobelt; P.H Hemsworth; J.L Barnett; K.L Butler; Sources of sampling variation in saliva cortisol in dogs. Res. Vet. Sci. 2003, 75, 157-161, 10.1016/s0034-5288(03)00080-8.
- Barbara L. Sherman; Daniel S. Mills; Canine Anxieties and Phobias: An Update on Separation Anxiety and Noise Aversions. Vet. Clin. North Am. Small Anim. Pract. 2008, 38, 1081-1106, 10.1016/j.cvsm.2008.04.012.