R&D&I at EDUCAN

Our mission

Devoted to animal and welfare studies, EDUCAN’s Center Your Dog Thinks and Loves You for Research, Development and Innovation works within two areas:

• The study of cognitive, emotional, communication and social skills of dogs with a view to developing didactical technology to influence their behaviour in an ethical, pedagogical and healthy way.
• The study of cognitive, emotional, communication and social skills of other species of non-human animals focusing on research lines that can be applied to improve the guidelines for conserving, managing, keeping, accommodating, and treating said species.

How we work

Our research is non-invasive and non-nasty to the animals tested. It is developed in such a way that the activities proposed are entertaining, enriching and desirable for our non-human mates.

Sometimes the word “research” can evoke the image of animals languishing in tiny metallic cages and whose only activity consists of being taken to other boxes where the experiments will be performed. “Research” can even make us think of dissected animals. Therefore, it is crucial for us to spread information about how we treat the non-human animals who cooperate with us and about how our work is actually developed.

Being devoted to animal and welfare studies, EDUCAN’s Center Your Dog Thinks and Loves You for Research, Development and Innovation abides by ethical research guidelines with regard to the treatment of non-human animals. Non-human animals have the consideration of colleagues and are never treated as mere objects of study. To guarantee their quality of life we have set ourselves the following standards:

• Animals shall live in environments which are enriched and adequate to promote their access to happiness.. We want to find out the skills of happy animals. Carrying out research with individuals sheltered in solitary confinement is not only ethically objectionable, but also leads to the collection of biased data. As a result the findings will be unrealistic and of limited use when applied to animals who live in more optimal conditions. For instance, the dogs that participate in our research are normal family dogs, just like yours. Therefore, in their everyday life they live with people who love them, go for walks to the park together with dog friends, chase balls or sleep on the couch.
• Animals are fed adequately, both from a quantitative and from a qualitative standpoint, so that they can enjoy their food, be happy and healthy while maintaining a proper weight.. Prolonged deprivation (i.e., keeping animals hungry and with a weight below advisable thresholds) has been common practice in research. However, we think that this practice should be ruled out as it is unfair and abusive. Not only that, like in the previous case, it introduces biases: the skills, the way of seeing the world and of relating and communicating widely varies depending on whether the animal is starving and/or isolated, on the one hand, or content on the other.
• Animals must be better off..Non-human animals cannot give consent with regard to their participation in research. Hence it is an obligation for us to ensure that they obtain something good when they cooperate in order to help us.

  Such benefits should be two-folded:

  • For those animals directly participating in our research.: Therefore, our experiments are designed so that animals experience them as games: occasions to have fun and experience satisfaction while gaining access to rewards of various types.
  • For the species under study: The aim of our work is to improve the way we live together with our world mates. Thus our research is designed so that its results can improve the conservation, management and the way we live together with said species.

Collaborate with us!!

If you are interested in our work you can cooperate with EDUCAN’s Center Your Dog Thinks and Loves You for Research, Development and Innovation, for animal and welfare studies.

Your dogs and you can become part of our research team. We can assure you that your dogs will have fun and that you will learn many things about them that will enable you to improve their happiness. After all, that is our goal.

Get ready and help us finding out more about our canine companions!

• 902 160 156
• investigacion@educan.es