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| I took this picture while sitting in my car in a parking lot. No dogs were with me at the time. |
Dog Appeasing Pheromone '
There’s been a lot of
bark over the Dog Appeasing
Pheromone (DAP) collar, DAP spray,
and DAP diffuser. It is seemingly being touted to handle all sorts of behavior
problems from the crying puppy, to the aggressive dog, to the puking dog inside
a car.
For those of you who have not heard of the DAP collar, it is
basically a device that emits a scent which reproduces the pheromone of a mother
dog when nursing which supposedly is to
help pups/dogs stay calm.
To me it seems this product is over praised
by professionals that are looking to
give a quick fix to a problem which may actually
need a combination of multiple aides such as counter conditioning, medication,
and long time training in conjunction with DAP.
Don’t get me wrong,
there have been studies where it has helped dogs, particularly puppies, but I
wonder if that is because the replicated mother’s scent is still fresh in their
minds.
I also wonder about
the clinical settings in which the testing’s were done. Settings such as
kennels and Vet offices are quite different from the average home. If the
studies took a multiple number of homes where dogs were suffering from specific
problems then to me it would be a little more realistic.
While some have had success with DAP whose dogs suffer from noise phobia or
separation anxiety, just as many people that I talked too had no
success.
Because my dogs could care less if I am with them or not and
are not the anxious type that they turn to shaking, vomiting, trembling, or
hiding, I personally did not want to
purchase a DAP collar since I felt I could not judge it fairly. So I did the
next best thing, I had someone else purchase it for their dog! (Thanks Gina!) Of course I also talked with many who had used
the product and I looked over some clinical studies in large group settings.
Some of the dog owners I talked to said it helped, others said they
tossed it in the trash because they noticed no difference, and some said it
made their dog more “flighty” becoming more nervous than they were before. All
of these that I heard from were dogs in a home situation not a kennel situation.
The owners I spoke to that thought the product worked had
dogs that suffered canine cognitive dysfunction, separation anxiety, or noise
anxiety, and the majority said it was
the DAP diffuser plug in that helped most, not the collar or the spray.
However none that I talked to said it helped with their
aggressive dogs. Even the clinical studies that have been done admit they saw
no change in aggressive behavior and this is why this product being touted as
the cure all for every situation is scary for me as someone who works as a
trainer in behavior modification.
I think it is great to give anything a try as each dog is
different and they don’t all respond to one particular product or training. As
well, much depends on the owner themselves if they are following through with ‘all’ that you are telling them to do,
or if are they trying to take the easy way out through medication or products
like the DAP collar.
Just like in life, nothing good comes easy. If you are
inclined to believe when your Vet or other advisor tells you this is the wonder
product of this century please ask that more information specific to your
problem be given to you just in case this miracle product is not the end all~ be all to your
dog’s situation.
To my contributing research partner and fellow
trainer/behaviorist Jane a big thank you for passing these studies on to me.
The links and conclusions/ summations of the studies done are below. They are not my writings but are pasted here for easier viewing. All credit of the below conclusions go to their authors and testers. The links are provided for you to take a look if you wish to.
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Fearful of vet office
setting ~ ( but not effective on aggressive dog behavior)
Abstract
The behaviour and emotional state of 15
dogs, known to be fearful of the veterinary clinic was evaluated during a
standardised 5 min waiting room procedure and standardised 2 min
consultation room procedure prior to a sham clinical examination, in the
presence of Dog Appeasing Pheromone and placebo. Subjects acted as their own
controls and were semi-randomly allocated into treatment groups to control for
order effects. A triple blinding procedure was used in order to remove bias
from the assessment of video recordings of the dogs, with two naïve independent
raters used to analyse the video recordings of the behaviour of dogs during the
test procedures. The raters showed good, and similar, agreement in their
evaluation of both the specific behaviour of the dogs and their putative
emotional state (relaxed, aroused and anxious). The results suggested that the
use of DAP in the clinic was associated with greater relaxation of the dogs but
there was no effect on aggressive behaviour
during the clinical examination.
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·
Dog; Fear; Fireworks; Homeopathy; Placebo
·
Seventy-five dogs that showed a fear
response to fireworks participated in a double-blinded, placebo-controlled
clinical trial to assess the efficacy of a homeopathic remedy for the
alleviation of their behavioural signs. Dogs were randomly assigned to one of
two treatments; the homeopathic treatment or the placebo treatment. At the
baseline assessments the owners identified the behavioural signs of fear that
their dogs normally displayed in response to fireworks, rated their frequency
and intensity, and assessed the global severity of their dog’s responses. These
measures were repeated at the final assessment and owners also completed weekly
diaries for the length of the trial. There were significant improvements in the
owners’ rating of 14/15 behavioural signs of fear in the placebo treatment
group and all 15 behavioural signs in the homeopathic treatment group. Both
treatment groups also showed significant improvement in the owners’ rating of
the global severity of their dog’s responses. However, there was no significant
difference in the response seen between the two treatment groups.
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House soiling and
night disturbance
A
placebo-controlled study to investigate the effect of Dog Appeasing Pheromone
and other environmental and management factors on the reports of disturbance
and house soiling during the night in recently adopted puppies.
Abstract (my question would be could the pup simply
over time gotten used to the new surrondings?)
Disturbance
and house soiling during the night are common problems faced by the new puppy
dog owner. They may result as consequence of a mismatch between the
developmental status of the puppy and its new environment and/or separation
distress in a typically social animal. The aim of this study was to examine the
effect of Dog Appeasing Pheromone (DAP, Ceva Santé Animale) as well as a range
of other management and environmental factors that might affect this process.
It has been suggested that DAP may help the puppy settle into the new home by
continuing the provision of the maternal appeasing pheromone. In order to test
this, a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of DAP was conducted with 60
pedigree puppies, aged between 6 and 10 weeks, as they entered their new home.
A few days prior to the puppy's arrival, volunteer owners were supplied with
either a verum or placebo plug-in diffuser designed for the slow release of the
pheromone analogue over 4 weeks. Owners reported daily on disturbance and house
soiling during the previous night over the following 8 weeks from the puppy's
first night in the new home. The effect of the treatment together with the
gender of the puppy, its maternal environment, the use of a puppy crate,
sleeping with other dogs at night and the experience of the owner were included
in a general linear model to explain the total number of nights spent
disturbing and house soiling. Sleeping with another dog reduced the puppies’
tendency to disturb at night to almost zero. Over 70% of puppies sleeping alone
disturbed during the first night. The mean total number of nights of
disturbance over the 2 months was between five and six nights, mostly in the
first week in the home. A significant effect of DAP treatment was found in the
case of the gundog breeds only (p = 0.003),
gundogs receiving placebo cried for a median of nine nights, those receiving
verum cried for a median of three nights. No effect of DAP treatment was
observed on the total number of nights that the puppy soiled the house (p > 0.05). However, puppies that were placed
in crates during the night (p = 0.004)
or had come from domestic maternal environments (p = 0.006)
had significantly fewer reports of house soiling over the first 2 months in the
new home.
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Car travel related studies
Signs
of travel-related problems in dogs and their response to treatment with dog
appeasing pheromone
Abstract
(My questions would be could the
behavior have just ended because they got used to the car?)
Sixty-two dogs with problems when
travelling in the car took part in a non-blinded study aimed at differentiating
groups of dogs on the basis of the pattern of signs shown by individual dogs
and their response to treatment with a collar impregnated with dog-appeasing
pheromone (DAP) for six
weeks and general behavioural advice. The dogs were taken out in the owner's
car at least twice weekly for nine weeks, and their behaviour was assessed
every three weeks to determine the frequency of 21 behavioural signs. On the
basis of these signs and by using principal components analysis, the dogs were
grouped into five well defined groups, defined as ‘excitable’, ‘nausea’,
‘tense’, ‘attention-seeking’ and ‘elimination’. For the purpose of statistical
analysis, the attention-seeking and elimination groups were combined when
assessing the effect of the treatment. All the groups showed some statistically
significant improvements after treatment, but their responses were not uniform.
The greatest perceived improvement was among the nausea group and the least was
among the excitable group. In the groups for which there were sufficient data
for analysis, there was little evidence of a relapse in most of the signs in
the three to five months after the collar had been removed.
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Puppy Training
This one is put out by the AVMA ~ it’s an easy read so I
did not post it as I did the others as all testing/conclusions seem to be on
the one page.
(~ puppy class~ my question~ puppies did
better - but is it possible they just became more socialized over a six week period and it had nothing to do with
DAP?)
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My
conclusion on this product would be the same on every other product when
it comes to needing behavior modification, try everything to see if it works as
long as it won’t harm the dog because all dogs
will react differently to any specific product or training. But I would
ask that you not look for miracles in one product alone and that you have a
back up plan to put in place. Dogs that
are fearful, have such anxieties such as separation anxiety, noise phobias or
aggressive issues did not get like that overnight and it will take longer than
overnight to help them reach the ‘best capacity that they are able to handle’.
As always I welcome feedback from all who have had success or failure with this product in the comments section below.
Because of such a wide
reaction to this product I have to give it a ½ & ½ rating. Two paws up and two paws down.
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