Rachel Malkani

The Animal Welfare Assessment Grid (AWAG) is tool that monitors the welfare of animals and has been validated across a range of species. The AWAG assesses physical health, psychological wellbeing, environmental comfort, and veterinary and management procedural events. There is a vital need for veterinary surgeons and animal welfare professionals to make ethical treatment and management decisions based on the welfare of the animal, rather than meet the expectations of the client. Tools to aid the decision-making process are scarce, and rarely consider the holistic wellbeing, nor do they consider the temporal experience of the animal. This research aims to adapt the AWAG for dogs, establish that the tool is valid and reliable, use the AWAG to evaluate the impact of the chronic disease on dogs and the individual factors that influence welfare, and additionally investigate how users find the AWAG to function as a decision-making tool.