About this Research Topic
Working animals and pets are different; they often have different nutritional and physical needs than pets or hobby animals, their daily lives are different in terms of expectations, performance, and focus, and their utility to humans is perhaps the most divergent. Often, working animals are required to perform a function critical to law enforcement, homeland security, medical monitoring, or contraband detection. Therefore, the training techniques, perspectives on stress, incidents of injury, and need for data are unique to the function and role we expect these animals to play in our lives and professions.
The working animal market is a vanishingly small portion of the ~$250B dollar pet industry market. There are few, if any, advocacy groups lobbying for working dog causes. And while many humans identify as "animal lovers", many of these same humans may not distinguish between these populations of animal or differentiate between "working" or "service" animals and pets.
The aim of this research topic is to put scientific perspectives, reasoning, and data behind controversies in the working animal community. This under-resourced community has often drawn criticism when research on pets is widely applied or over-generalized to working animals. But does that change the ethics of our use of animals whether they are for business (working) or pleasure (pets)? The focus of this topic is to help address and add to the body of literature, themes related to working animals specifically so that we may all have a greater appreciation for and understanding of the issues unique to this population of animals.
Potential themes include, but without limitation to:
• Use of electronic training tools
• Differentiation between types of stress: distress and eustress
• Effects of kenneling or confinement (short term or long term)
• Injuries unique to working animals
• Behavioral euthanasia
• Compare/Contrast training versus operational environments
• Best practices for creating, maintaining, collecting, and interpreting data from training records/logs
• Applicability and practicability of force-free, purely positive, positive reinforcement only, training techniques for working animals
• Research needs for the working animal community
• Legal status of working animals with respect to access to public spaces and transportation
All article types accepted by Frontiers are welcome.
The working animal market is a vanishingly small portion of the ~$250B dollar pet industry market. There are few, if any, advocacy groups lobbying for working dog causes. And while many humans identify as "animal lovers", many of these same humans may not distinguish between these populations of animal or differentiate between "working" or "service" animals and pets.
The aim of this research topic is to put scientific perspectives, reasoning, and data behind controversies in the working animal community. This under-resourced community has often drawn criticism when research on pets is widely applied or over-generalized to working animals. But does that change the ethics of our use of animals whether they are for business (working) or pleasure (pets)? The focus of this topic is to help address and add to the body of literature, themes related to working animals specifically so that we may all have a greater appreciation for and understanding of the issues unique to this population of animals.
Potential themes include, but without limitation to:
• Use of electronic training tools
• Differentiation between types of stress: distress and eustress
• Effects of kenneling or confinement (short term or long term)
• Injuries unique to working animals
• Behavioral euthanasia
• Compare/Contrast training versus operational environments
• Best practices for creating, maintaining, collecting, and interpreting data from training records/logs
• Applicability and practicability of force-free, purely positive, positive reinforcement only, training techniques for working animals
• Research needs for the working animal community
• Legal status of working animals with respect to access to public spaces and transportation
All article types accepted by Frontiers are welcome.
Keywords: Smell, Odor Detection, Olfactory Science, Stress, Training
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
