Factors associated with daily dog walking.

Factors associated with daily dog walking.
Regular physical activity is beneficial for the health of people and animals, and plays a role in the prevention and treatment of numerous causes of morbidity and mortality . With increasing levels of obesity in humans and dogs , the potential of regular exercise performed together, such as dog walking, has come to the fore as a realistic public health intervention that benefits both humans and dogs.
Numerous studies have confirmed that dog owners are more physically active than those without dogs, but also that not all pet dogs walk regularly (for a review of this evidence, see . More recently, attention has turned to exploring the barriers and incentives to regular dog walking using qualitative and quantitative research methods in order to identify modifiable factors that can be used in interventions to encourage dog walking . Most research to date has been conducted in North America (e.g., or Australia (e.g., with relatively limited data from the United Kingdom . However, cultural differences in dog ownership and walking practices mean that findings from one country do not necessarily apply to another. For example, in some countries, such as the USA, 'dog parks' are commonly used as off-leash exercise areas while in the UK and Australia they are rare.
A recent review of the correlates of dog walking highlights that one of the most important influences on how often an owner walks their dog is the strength of the relationship the owner has with the dog , this is often referred to as 'a sense of obligation' to walk the dog or reporting that the dog provides support and motivation to walk . Evidence of the influence of dog related factors such as number of dogs and size was mixed, but may be due to the already accounted for influence of the level of motivation a dog provides for walking .. Physical environment factors may also play an important role in encouraging physical activity in people in general, but also through the provision of walking areas with specific features to support the dog . Another area that requires more research is the role of facilitating social interactions that walking with dogs can provide.
Most studies in this area have focused on the owner as the object of interest of the activity, rather than the dog . However, a disadvantage of this approach is that the data sets that provide the information are sparse in dog-specific and owner-dog relationship information. Data sets collected with the dog as the focus instead have the potential to provide more in-depth detail on the influence of dog demographic and behavioral factors, dog management factors, and owner beliefs about the dog. The aim of this study was to describe dog walking and explore the factors associated with it, in particular the type and strength of the owner-dog relationship, using a well-characterized UK dataset of dogs and their owners.
Data collection has been described extensively previously . Briefly, household interviews with 1,278 households in a geographically defined community in Cheshire, UK, identified 260 dog-owning households who were subsequently recruited to complete a questionnaire on owner and dog behavior and general management. Data were collected over the period July to October 2005. Many details were collected about dog walking practices and about dog and owner behaviors that may contribute to, or be proxies for, the strength of the dog-owner relationship. The data set consisted of 279 dogs belonging to 214 households that participated in the study by returning their questionnaires.
This study identified that a number of factors related to the strength and nature of the dog-owner relationship are associated with daily dog walking. Future studies need to further investigate how demographic and behavioral factors of the dog, in addition to owner behavioral factors and perceptions of the dog, influence the dog-human relationship in relation to the perceived support and motivation a dog can provide for walking. This information can then lead to the design of effective interventions to promote dog-walking behavior through this relationship and improve the health of people and their pets.