Health care management practices of pet dogs in Karnataka

Pet owners should be well aware of the fundamentals of management like deworming and vaccination schedules, frequency of ear cleaning, grooming practice, various infectious diseases that affect pets and regarding regular health checkups. Awareness on these scientific practices to maintain health of the pet dogs immensely contribute to the welfare of both pets as well as their owners, hence the present study was carried out to know various health care management practices of pet dogs carried out by pet dog owners of Bengaluru district of Karnataka through multistage random sampling technique. Majority of the respondents carried out regular deworming (60%) and vaccination (62.09%). More than half (51.25%) of the owners took general precautions for sick dogs. Cent per cent of the respondents took their dogs for a regular walk/exercise and majority (84.58%) of the owners expressed that their dogs suffered from previous illness. Since, majority of the respondents had not practiced health care management practices like regular grooming, regular health check-up, isolation practices, there is a dire need to create sufficient awareness with respect to health care management practices among dog owners.