Using social media listening to identify the real-world challenges faced by dog owners globally when administering oral medications

Georgina Anne Tarrant^1*Taran Rai¹ANDREA K WRIGHT²Travis Lee Street¹KEVIN WELLS¹

• ¹University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom
• ²Zoetis (United States), Parsippany, New Jersey, United States

One of the most common veterinary responses following diagnosis of disease in companion animals is the prescribing and dispensing of oral medication. Alternatively, this may involve the purchase of over-the-counter drugs, both requiring regular administration over an extended period. However, there is limited data to confirm that regular successful administration of such oral medication takes place. In actuality, at-home administration of oral medication may generate various challenges for pet owners which may compromise compliance and thus impact treatment outcome. By analyzing online posts published on social media platforms, this study seeks to understand the challenges faced by pet owners with at-home administration of tablets or pills to their pets (pilling). The aim was to better understand pet owners' perspectives on oral medication administration techniques and adherence. The study employed a commercial social media listening (SML) tool to gather data from relevant social media platforms comprising of X (previously Twitter), Reddit, Facebook, blogs and forums. Natural language processing (NLP) techniques were applied to analyze the online discourse focusing on key research questions encompassing pet owners' roles, attitudes toward medication administration and the perceived value of various oral administration techniques. Once social media data addressing these issues had been initially identified and downloaded, Large Language Models (LLMs) were employed for data cleaning (duplicate and advertisement removal) and context filtering to ensure relevancy of data used in the analysis. We find major reported anxiety in owners of dogs requiring administration of pills, both in terms of overall animal welfare and in terms of successful dosing and prescription compliance. We present a list of the most common successful strategies posted on social media by pet owners administering pills to dogs in a domestic setting.