We are asking centres to help us recruit puppy owners to sign up to ‘Generation Pup’. With so many puppies finding loving homes through rehoming centres, you have the opportunity to make a massive difference to the success of Generation Pup.
The study has been approved by the University of Bristol Animal Welfare Ethical Research Board (UIN/18/052), the Social Science Ethical Review Board at the Royal Veterinary College - URN SR2017-1116, and the Dogs Trust Ethical Review Board – ERB009. Dogs Trust funds and operates the Generation Pup study.
The main help we need from centres is ‘spreading the word’ and enthusing the new owners of puppies about the project to help us develop a large Generation Pup community. As we are looking to recruit 10,000 puppies, we would be very grateful for any help in achieving this.
We would really appreciate it if you would consider sharing information about Generation Pup by having posters for owners in your centres, sharing our news on Facebook or Twitter, telling your friends and recruiting owners coming to puppy socialisation classes. With your help we can make Generation Pup a once in a lifetime study which will have massive benefits for all of dogdom!
We can also come and give presentations to encourage owners to sign up to the study, so get in touch if you would like to host a Generation Pup client evening.
If you are interesting in placing Generation Pup recruiting posters in your centre, please email generationpup@dogstrust.org.uk and we will provide you with posters you can print yourself or, alternatively, we can post posters to you. We will also be able to provide instructions and digital copies of the posters if you wish to help us recruit via online methods.
Please get in touch by emailing generationpup@dogstrust.org.uk and we can discuss options with you.
Generation Pup is a ‘birth cohort study’, like the well-known “Children of the 90’s” study, which has had a massive impact on knowledge about child development, health and disease, and informed many aspects of public health policy.
In our study, we plan to do the same – but for dogs! Many important welfare conditions in dogs, such as gut diseases, leg injuries, diabetes or behaviour problems are influenced by multiple factors.
Other research methods used to investigate these problems are limited by perhaps only collecting some of the factors important in disease development, or being unable to identify whether the factors were present before the disease developed.
This study has the great advantage of collecting information about dogs as they move through their lives – so we can identify the ages at which diseases occur and which factors might have contributed to their development.
If you would like to be keep up to date with the latest news from Generation Pup you can sign up to receive e-mail updates. Alternatively, you can follow us on facebook.com/generationpup and twitter.com/generationpup to receive regular updates. You can also visit this website for the latest news.