Estimated activity levels in dogs at population scale with linear and causal modelling

Abigail O'Rourke^1*Richard M Haydock¹Richard F Butterwick¹Alexander German²Aletha Carson³Scott Lyle³Ciaran O'Flynn^1,4

• ¹Waltham Petcare Science Institute, Melton Mowbray, United Kingdom
• ²Institute of Life Course and Medical Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, North West England, United Kingdom
• ³Pet Insight Project, Whistle Labs, San Francisco, United States
• ⁴Machine Intelligence and Decision Systems Research Group, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom

The aim of this study was to determine patterns of physical activity in pet dogs using real-world data at a population scale aided by the use of accelerometers and electronic health records (EHRs).A directed acyclic graph (DAG) was created to capture background knowledge and causal assumptions related to dog activity, and this was used to identify relevant data sources, which included activity data from commercially available accelerometers, and health and patient metadata from the EHRs. Linear mixed models (LMM) were fitted to the number of active minutes following log-transformation with the fixed effects tested based on the variables of interest and the adjustment sets indicated by the DAG.Results: Activity was recorded on 8,726,606 days for 28,562 dogs with 136,876 associated EHRs, with the median number of activity records per dog being 162 (interquartile range [IQR] 60-390). The average recorded activity per day of 51 minutes was much lower than previous estimates of physical activity, and there was wide variation in activity levels from less than 10 to over 600 minutes per day. Physical activity decreased with age, an effect that was dependent on breed size, whereby there was a greater decline in activity for age as breed size increased. Activity increased with breed size and owner age independently. Activity also varied independently with sex, location, climate, season and day of the week: males were more active than females, and dogs were more active in rural areas, in hot dry or marine climates, in spring, and on weekends.Accelerometer-derived activity data gathered from pet dogs living in North America was used to determine associations with both dog and environmental characteristics. Knowledge of these associations could be used to inform daily exercise and caloric requirements for dogs, and how they should be adapted according to individual circumstances.