What got you interested in the field of animal welfare?
It was during one of my second-year courses as an undergraduate student at UBC. The lecture was about “animal welfare”, a field of study I didn’t know existed at the time. In that lecture, they showed examples of seals displaying a back-arching pose after being marked by branding iron – a sign that the seal is experiencing pain. I was always interested in animals, but learning that I can study animal welfare was what got me interested in pursuing it further.
How has your research/work helped to improve animal welfare?
My research focused on dog importation operations in Canada. I specifically focused on international dog rescue, where dogs are rescued from abroad and adopted into Canada. There is a lot of stigma surrounding international rescue dogs, such as zoonotic disease risk and poor behaviour in dogs. My research helped to understand if imported dogs are at increased risk of zoonotic diseases and poor behaviour.
What do you hope to do moving forward?
I want to continue learning about dog behaviour. I’ve taken courses on animal behaviour so I have a theoretical understanding of animal behaviour, but I lack practical experience actually working with dogs and seeing their behaviour.