Because dogs cannot talk

We have noticed that a lot of owners of dogs with chronic gut conditions like Inflammatory Bowel Disease (information on this condition on dogs and cats can be found here) or bowel cancers report these dogs to have intermittent "stomach cramps", loud gut noises or restlessness because of suspected abdominal (belly) pain. This is really hard to measure and is not normally assessed with tools that we have to determine the severity of disease.

This is why the DIGEST clinic has teamed up with our animal behaviour specialists to develop a method to better measure this pain and to test if it has an effect on quality of life and behaviour.

Owners of dogs with suspected chronic gut conditions or known belly pain are eligible to participate in our study. This entails filling out two questionnaires (one short one as a paper version, and a longer one online) and giving permission for our veterinarians to perform a "belly pain" score as part of their physical examination. We will usually ask your permission to videotape this part of the examination so that we can review it later.

You can find more detailed information about this study here.

If you have been contacted by us and asked if you would like to participate, we will ask you to sign a consent form, which you can find here.

An extract of the questionnaire assessing quality of life can be found here.

The link to the online questionnaire can be found here (you will receive instructions on how to use it directly from us if you participate in this study).

This project has been approved by the R(D)SVS ethics and welfare committee with the approval number VERC 43.17. This study is not supported by any funding. Permission for usage of questionnaires has been obtained from the respective copyright holders.