ICAW Conference in Malta

Vet nurse Hayley Walters was invited by Dogs Trust International to speak at ICAWC (International Companion Animal Welfare Conference) in Malta this October. 229 delegates representing 101 organisations from 39 different countries attended the conference.

Hayley spoke on recognising acute and chronic pain in cats and dogs, how to measure it, and how to treat it.

“Pain can be an emotive subject and two people looking at the same animal can disagree on wether it is in pain or not. Being able to take the subjectivity out of measuring pain is important. By using validated pain scoring tools such as the ‘Glasgow Composite Pain Scale’ for acute pain in cats and dogs  and ‘Liverpool Osteoarthritis in Dogs‘ (LOAD) for chronic pain we can objectively measure how much pain an animal is experiencing, treat it accordingly and then remeasure”.

Photo credit: Richard Murgatroyd (www.richardmurgatroyd.com)

Hayley received positive feedback from many of the delegates who were working in Dog Population Management projects and rescue shelters, and was honoured to be among many prestigious animal welfare speakers.

New Video: Dog Welfare in Trap-Neuter-Return Programmes

We're very excited to announce the launch of our new video on YouTube, created in partnership with the Dog's Trust.

The Dog's Trust awarded the JMICAWE a grant to investigate dog welfare in Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programmes. This method is advocated by animal welfare organisations and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). However, with high targets for the TNR programmes in many countries, we need to ensure that we are not putting individual dog welfare at risk in order to achieve population control.

In this video, Heather Bacon, our Veterinary Welfare Education and Outreach manager talks about some of the work we've been doing with the Dog's Trust to understand and measure welfare in a TNR programme.

As Heather says, dog population management is a global issue. A good TNR programme will protect dog populations by improving their health, their relationships with the human community and controlling their population size. But a good TNR programme also needs to consider the use of welfare measures to monitor dog welfare while they are going through the programme.