Evaluation of a canine and feline behavioural welfare assessment tool for use in companion animal veterinary practice

Veterinary care can both positively and negatively impact animal welfare in terms of behavioural welfare. This occurs both in the veterinary clinic through interactions with patients and management of their stress, fear and aggression, and in the animal's home through the provision of behaviour and training advice for behavioural management as a whole. An animal welfare assessment scheme, incorporating management-, resource- and animal-based measures of animal welfare through interviews and appointment observations, was developed to assess practices related to behavioural welfare in small animal veterinary clinics. It was tested for reliability, validity, and feasibility in 30 companion and mixed animal veterinary clinics, and information concerning current behavioural welfare practices was also collected. Based on weighted kappa statistics, inter-observer reliability showed almost perfect agreement for interview scoring (Kw = 0.82 and 0.81) and substantial agreement for appointment observation scoring (Kw = 0.74 and 0.70); however, at the individual question and handling item level, weighted kappa statistics for inter-observer reliability ranged greatly. Interviews were more feasible to carry out than appointment observations, although discrepancies between interview responses and veterinary staff-patient interactions observed during appointments suggest that interviews might be a less valid measure. Descriptive results suggest that there is enough variability in most assessed areas to allow for differentiation between veterinary clinics on the basis of their behavioural welfare practices. Additional research is required to explore these trends in strengths and areas for improvement in a larger sample of veterinary clinics.