Introduction: As it is well known dog trainers apply behavioral theories to effect behavioral change and communicate their knowledge to owners/handlers. Among those theories is stress, stress-related behaviors, stress management and coping skills. Many studies are published about techniques but a very limited number of studies on the humans who employ those techniques is available and no study on their coping skills, which seems essential for training stress management strategies with dogs or training dogs in general. Therefore the goal of the presented study was to identify risk clusters according to coping strategies in dog trainers and explore this rarely researched population.
Methods and Analysis: Using a cross-sectional design, 256 dog trainers were surveyed using an online-questionnaire including a self-report testbattery to measure twenty different coping strategies (SVF-120 Stressverarbeitungsfragebogen (Erdmann & Janke, 2008)) and questions about daily work life including job stressors. Statistical analysis included cluster analysis, concurrent GLM procedures (including MANOVA), t-tests and Cohens d as effect size measure.
Results:Cluster analysis shows three different clusters of dog trainers which were named “Young Performers”, younger dog trainers with mostly average coping strategies and a subjective mental health score of 76 out of 100, “Healthy Optimizers” with a subjective mental health score of 92 and unhealthy coping strategies, and “Social Support Seekers”, the oldest group of dog trainers, showing good subjective mental and physical health scores with the highest use of social support as coping strategy. The three groups show significant differences in most coping strategies with the most relevant differences in negative
(maladaptive/unhealthy) strategies “Resignation” (F(2,144)=60.924,p=.01,η2=.458),”Social Encapsulation” (F(2,144)=42.341,p=.001,η2=.370) and “Self-Pity” (F(2,144)=34.223,p=001,η2=.322). Negative coping strategies also represent highly relevant differences between dog trainers and the general population. For instance the significantly higher use of the negative strategy “Medication” to cope with stress shows a problematic behaviour which might lead to more clinically relevant problems (t(255)=32.273,p<.001,d=1.643).
Conclusion: Dog trainers have not been researched in the past although this group plays a highly important role in human-dog-interaction. The profession needs recognition and transparency. It seems that unhealthy coping strategies are quite common amongst dog trainers. Health promotion measures are urgently needed.