Shelter disease surveillance and shelter welfare assessment in short term housing shelters: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Six shelters with 7,468 animals (2,305 cats and 5,163 dogs) were followed and diseases and shelter welfare conditions were recorded for one year. Disease records were obtained and categorised on three headings (surgery, internal medicine, and reproductive diseases and interventions) and subheading categories. Descriptive statistics was used to reveal disease distribution, which can attribute to surveillance data. To evaluate shelter welfare conditions, a protocol was developed and shelters were assessed. Under the surgical disease category, the most encountered disease records were open wounds (502, 59.41% and 175, 31.99%) for dogs and cats. For the internal medicine category, the most encountered were respiratory system diseases both for dogs (917, 33.26%) and cats (351, 58.21%). Under the reproductive disease category, the most common disease in dogs was orchitis (29, 60.42%). In cats, the most encountered disease was metritis (19, 79.16%). Ordinal logistic regression was used for evaluation of associations between diseases and shelter conditions. For dogs, with a one-point increase in shelter score, the odds of encountering reproductive diseases increased by 1.4%, while the odds of cumulative and internal diseases decreased 1.1 and 1.2 times (P<0.05) respectively. For cats, with an increase in shelter scores, the odds of encountering reproductive and cumulative diseases increased by 3.4% and 0.2%, respectively (P<0.05). Disease surveillance and their relation with shelter conditions may be helpful to design efficient plans in shelters.