Critical Problems for Research in Animal Sheltering, a Conceptual Analysis.

Animal shelter research has seen significant increases in participation over the past several decades from academic organizations, private organizations, public entities, and even corporations that aims to improve shelter programs, processes, operations, and outcomes for the various stakeholders/participants involved in a shelter system (animals, humans, the community, wildlife, and the environment). These efforts are scattered through a huge variety of different research areas that are challenging to define and scope for organizations seeking to start new lines of research inquiry. This work aims to enumerate some of the most critical outstanding problems for research in animal sheltering in a conceptual framework that is intended to help direct research conversations toward the research topics of highest impact (with the highest quality outcomes possible). To this end, we define seven (7) key areas for research: animal behavior, adoptions and special needs populations, medical conditions, disease transmission, community, ecology, and wellness (one health), operations, and public-private-academic-corporate collaboration. Within each of these areas, we review specific problems and highlight examples of successes in each area in the past several decades. We close with a discussion of some of the topics that were not detailed in this manuscript but, nonetheless, deserve some mention. Through this enumeration, we hope to spur conversation around innovative methodologies, technologies, and concepts in both research and practice in animal sheltering.

Pet-Friendly for Whom? An Analysis of Pet Fees in Texas Rental Housing.

Previous studies have underscored the difficulty low-income pet owners often face when attempting to secure affordable rental housing. Further exacerbating this housing disparity are fees charged on top of normal monthly rent to pet owners in "pet-friendly" rental housing. In this study, we aggregated rental housing listings from the twenty most populous cities in Texas, USA from a popular online rental database. We paired the rental listings with census tract information from the American Community Survey in order to investigate economic and racial/ethnic patterns in the spatial distribution of the properties. We find that less expensive pet-friendly listings were more likely to have pet fees charged on top of rent than rental units that were more expensive. Additionally, when pet fee burden was defined as a function of average income by census tract, low-income communities and communities of color were more likely than higher income and predominantly White communities to pay disproportionately higher fees to keep pets in their homes. We also find patterns of spatial inequalities related to pet fee burden by a metric of income inequality by city. The burden of pet rental fees may contribute to both housing insecurity and companion animal relinquishment. We discuss these findings as they relate to inequalities in housing, with particular attention to marginalized and disadvantaged people with pets. We conclude with recommendations for policy and practice.

Changes in Mass Treatment of the Canine Parvovirus ICU Population in Relation to Public Policy Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Previous work has indicated that canine parvovirus (CPV) prevalence in the Central Texas region may follow yearly, periodic patterns. The peak in CPV infection rates occurs during the summer months of May and June, marking a distinct "CPV season". We hypothesized that human activity contributes to these seasonal changes in CPV infections. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in drastic changes in human behavior which happened to synchronize with the CPV season in Central Texas, providing a unique opportunity with which to assess whether these society-level behavioral changes result in appreciable changes in CPV patient populations in the largest CPV treatment facility in Texas. In this work, we examine the population of CPV-infected patients at a large, dedicated CPV treatment clinic in Texas (having treated more than 5000 CPV-positive dogs in the last decade) and demonstrate that societal-behavioral changes due to COVID-19 were associated with a drastic reduction in CPV infections. This reduction occurred precisely when CPV season would typically begin, during the period immediately following state-wide "reopening" of business and facilities, resulting in a change in the typical CPV season when compared with previous years. These results provide evidence that changes in human activity may, in some way, contribute to changes in rates of CPV infection in the Central Texas region.

A Decade of Treatment of Canine Parvovirus in an Animal Shelter: A Retrospective Study.

Here, we present 11.5 years of monthly treatment statistics showing an overall intake of 5127 infected dogs between June 2008 and December 2019, as well as more detailed datasets from more recent, less protracted time periods for the examination of mortality risk, seasonality, and resource requirements in the mass treatment of canine parvovirus (CPV) in a private animal shelter. The total survival rate of animals during the study period was 86.6% (n = 4438/5127 dogs survived) with the probability of survival increasing to 96.7% after five days of treatment (with 80% of fatalities occurring in that period). A distinct parvovirus season peaking in May and June and troughing in August, September, December, and January was observed, which could have contributed as much as 41 animals peak-to-trough in the monthly population (with a potential, smaller season occurring in October). Low-weight and male animals were at higher risk for death, whereas age was not a significant contributing factor. Treatment time averaged 9.03 h of total care during a seven-day median treatment duration. These findings, taken together, demonstrate that canine parvovirus can be successfully treated in a sustainable manner within a shelter setting using a largely volunteer workforce.

Double dissociation of structure-function relationships in memory and fluid intelligence observed with magnetic resonance elastography.

Brain tissue mechanical properties, measured in vivo with magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), have proven to be sensitive metrics of neural tissue integrity. Recently, our group has reported on the positive relationship between viscoelasticity of the hippocampus and performance on a relational memory task in healthy young adults, which highlighted the potential of sensitive MRE measures for studying brain health and its relation to cognitive function; however, structure-function relationships outside of the hippocampus have not yet been explored. In this study, we examined the relationships between viscoelasticity of both the hippocampus and the orbitofrontal cortex and performance on behavioral assessments of relational memory and fluid intelligence. In a sample of healthy, young adults (N = 53), there was a significant, positive relationship between orbitofrontal cortex viscoelasticity and fluid intelligence performance (r = 0.42; p = .002). This finding is consistent with the previously reported relationship between hippocampal viscoelasticity and relational memory performance (r = 0.41; p = .002). Further, a significant double dissociation between the orbitofrontal-fluid intelligence relationship and the hippocampal-relational memory relationship was observed. These data support the specificity of regional brain MRE measures in support of separable cognitive functions. This report of a structure-function relationship observed with MRE beyond the hippocampus suggests a future role for MRE as a sensitive neuroimaging technique for brain mapping.

Reconstructing relational information.

Hippocampal involvement in learning and remembering relational information has an extensive history, often focusing specifically on spatial information. In humans, spatial reconstruction (SR) paradigms are a powerful tool for evaluating an individuals' spatial-relational memory. In SR tasks, participants study locations of items in space and subsequently reconstruct the studied display after a short delay. Previous work has revealed that patients with hippocampal damage are impaired both in overall placement accuracy as well as on a specific measure of relational memory efficacy, "swaps" (i.e., when the relative location of two items is reversed). However, the necessity of the hippocampus for other types of spatial-relational information involved in reconstruction behaviors (e.g., where in the environment and relative to which other items an item was located) have not yet been investigated systematically. In this work, three patients with hippocampal damage and nine healthy matched comparison participants performed an SR task. An analysis framework was developed to independently assess three first-order types of relations: (1) memory for the binding of specific item identities to locations, (2) memory for arrangement of items in relation to each other or the environment bounds, regardless of memory for the item identity, and (3) higher-order, compound relational errors (i.e., errors involving multiple pieces of relational information). Reconstruction errors were evaluated to determine the degree to which patients and comparisons differed (or not) on each type of spatial-relational information. Data revealed that the primary group difference in performance was for identity-location information. However, when the locations of items were evaluated without regarding the identities, no group difference was found in the number of item placements to studied locations. The present work provides a principled approach to analysis of SR data and clarifies our understanding of the types of spatial relations impaired in hippocampal damaged.