Demographics of dogs, cats, and rabbits attending veterinary practices in Great Britain as recorded in their electronic health records

Abstract

Background: Understanding the distribution and determinants of disease in animal populations must be underpinned by knowledge of animal demographics. For companion animals, these data have been difficult to collect because of the distributed nature of the companion animal veterinary industry. Here we describe key demographic features of a large veterinary-visiting pet population in Great Britain as recorded in electronic health records, and explore the association between a range of animal's characteristics and socioeconomic factors.

Results: Electronic health records were captured by the Small Animal Veterinary Surveillance Network (SAVSNET), from 143 practices (329 sites) in Great Britain. Mixed logistic regression models were used to assess the association between socioeconomic factors and species and breed ownership, and preventative health care interventions. Dogs made up 64.8% of the veterinary-visiting population, with cats, rabbits and other species making up 30.3, 2.0 and 1.6% respectively. Compared to cats, dogs and rabbits were more likely to be purebred and younger. Neutering was more common in cats (77.0%) compared to dogs (57.1%) and rabbits (45.8%). The insurance and microchipping relative frequency was highest in dogs (27.9 and 53.1%, respectively). Dogs in the veterinary-visiting population belonging to owners living in least-deprived areas of Great Britain were more likely to be purebred, neutered, insured and microchipped. The same association was found for cats in England and for certain parameters in Wales and Scotland.

Conclusions: The differences we observed within these populations are likely to impact on the clinical diseases observed within individual veterinary practices that care for them. Based on this descriptive study, there is an indication that the population structures of companion animals co-vary with human and environmental factors such as the predicted socioeconomic level linked to the owner's address. This 'co-demographic' information suggests that further studies of the relationship between human demographics and pet ownership are warranted.

Keywords: Companion animals; Demographics; Electronic health records; SAVSNET; Socioeconomic factors.

Fig. 1

Geographical distribution of veterinary premises (N = 329; black circles) and animals (grey crosses) of the study. The boundaries for Great Britain depict the regions considered in the study (i.e. the countries of Scotland and Wales and the English regions of East Midlands, East of England, London, North East, North West, South East, South West, West Midlands, Yorkshire and The Humber). The reference map layers used contain: National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right 2011 and 2012, NRS data © Crown copyright and database right 2011 and Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2011 and 2012

Fig. 2

Age profile of dogs (a), cats (b) and rabbits (c) presenting to SAVSNET veterinary practices

Fig. 3

Percentage of total dogs by dog breed (a) and total cats by cat breed (b). The asterisk (*) indicates that the percentage of total cats represented by crossbred cats was limited for presentation purposes because they represented such a large proportion of the population; crossbred cats accounted for 89.6% of total cats in this population

Fig. 4

Age (in years) at time of neutering in dogs and cats. The percentage of dogs and cats neutered at a given age, for the 51.2% of neutered dogs and 42.3% of neutered cats where this age was known

Fig. 5

Age at time of neutering for dogs and cats neutered in their first year of life. The percentage of dogs and cats neutered is shown for 10 day intervals