The relationship between keeping and incidence of disease in service dogs of the National Police of Ukraine

With the beginning of the anti-terrorist operation and full-scale invasion, the role of service dogs and the requirements for dog training centers have increased significantly. Currently, the activities of the dog training units of the National Police of Ukraine are regulated by the Instructions on the organization of service dog training in the National Guard of Ukraine (2014) and the Instructions on the organization of the activities of dog training units of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine (2018). The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the keeping conditions of service dogs and the incidence of morbidity. The study included reporting materials from 20 dog training centers of the Main Departments of the National Police of Ukraine. The incidence of dog disease and the relationship between diseases and some environmental factors (group size, temperature in winter and summer, air humidity, size of the enclosure, disinfection of enclosures and premises) were studied. It was found that the most common in this population of dogs were surgical diseases – 61.2 %, internal non-communicable diseases were 28,7 %, invasive – 5,9 %, infectious – 4,2 %. Among surgical diseases, the most common were diseases of the skin, organs of vision and hearing, traumatic injuries (total 85,5 %), internal non-communicable – diseases of the gastrointestinal tract (73,7 %), invasive – piroplasmosis (74,3 %), among infectious – diseases of viral etiology (72,0 %). A negative correlation was found between the number of cases of dog diseases and disinfection of enclosures (r = -0,60 – -0,13) emphasizing the importance of this measure for reducing the prevalence of diseases. It was found that the group size of the service dog population in a canine unit affects the prevalence of surgical and internal non-communicable diseases – fewer cases of disease were observed in large canine groups (51 heads and more), the effect of dog population group size on the number of cases of parasitic and infectious diseases was not found. Key words: service dogs, incidence rate, keeping, disinfection, group size.