DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15304081
title: Dog Pain Database: A Multidimensional Dataset for Investigating Canine Pain

description: Description:

This dataset contains comprehensive demographic, medical, pain-related, and personality data from 200 dogs recruited from a large referral small animal hospital in Switzerland. The dataset is part of the "Paws in Pain" project, designed to develop a multidimensional database aimed at advancing the assessment and understanding of canine pain. This database integrates various validated scales, including the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), Glasgow Composite Measure Pain Scale (GCPS), and personality assessments using the Monash and PANAS questionnaires.

Dataset contents:

·         Demographic data, including age, breed, sex, neuter status.

·         Medical data, including primary diagnosis, medication administered, patient type (hospitalized, surgical, consultation, emergency).

·         Pain-related data, including type of pain (such as acute, chronic, inflammatory, neuropathic, nociceptive), pain scores from VAS and GCPS.

·         Personality data, including the item scores from Monash and Positive and Negative Activation Scale (PANAS) assessing personality traits like anxiety, fearfulness, and sociability.

·       Additionally, video recordings have been collected from these dogs. Researchers interested in accessing these videos for collaboration projects are invited to contact the dataset authors.  

Format: Excel (.xlsx)

Usage notes: This dataset can be utilized to assess and analyse questions related to canine pain such as correlations among canine pain levels, medical conditions, personality traits, breeds, diagnoses, and demographic variables. Researchers may use these data to explore relationships between pain states and personality, investigate breed-specific differences in pain expression, or examine the interaction between clinical diagnoses and pain severity. 

Ethics and consent: Ethical approval for this study was granted by the University of Lincoln Ethics Committee under the approval reference UoL2024_18004. In compliance with the Swiss Animal Welfare Act (TSchG), this study did not require approval from the Committee for Animal Experimentation of the Canton of Bern (Switzerland), as the data were collected during routine diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Dog owners provided consent for the use of their pets' data for research purposes.

Suggested citation: Bremhorst, A. (2025). Dog Pain Database: A Multidimensional Dataset for Investigating Canine Pain. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15303646.

License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Funding and acknowledgments: This project was supported by an SNSF Spark Grant. Special thanks to the veterinary hospital and all dog owners who participated in this research.

Authors and contributors:

·         Annika Bremhorst, University of Bern

·         Claudia Spadavecchia, University of Bern

·         Michelle Braghetti, University of Bern

·         Anna Zamansky, University of Haifa

·         Liat Vichman, University of Haifa

·         Nareed Farhat, University of Haifa

·         Daniel Mills, University of Lincoln