Maternal behavior in domestic dogs

Abstract

For the past years, there is an increased interest for maternal behavior in human’s best friend – the dog. Indeed, studies show that the quality of mothering is not only important for the survival of the puppies during the first weeks of life, for the bonding process but recently it shows that it might have a long-lasting impact on the puppies’ future performance. However, how to define and measure maternal behavior? From the early studies to nowadays, the display of acts from the bitch right prior to parturition (preparation phase), and then continuously toward the puppies until weaning are the repertoire of actions that define maternal behavior. For the scientific community, maternal care is quantified as a principal component assessing attitudes that are easy to measure from the dam to the puppies such as: the time spent in contact, time and/or frequency of licking/grooming and time and position of nursing. Though, there is still a need to elucidate different aspects of maternal behavior in the dog, for example the effect of genetics, the impact of the emotional state of the bitch and the quality of maternal behavior, the role of hormones, the possibility to improve maternal behavior, there is some information to share. The idea is to give an overview of maternal behavior that permits veterinarians, breeders to identify and prevent problems to optimize the dog welfare.