Long-term behavioral resilience in search-and-rescue dogs responding to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks

Working dogs are valued for their olfactory abilities, trainability, and teamwork with their handlers. They often work in environments that could be associated with stress, and it is critical to understand the impact these experiences have on behavioral and medical welfare. A cohort of search-and-rescue (SAR) dogs that responded to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and a cohort of SAR dogs that did not deploy to that event have been followed over their lifetimes to assess the health and behavioral effects of this deployment. The Canine Behavioral and Research Questionnaire (C-BARQ) was administered annually to handlers of 150 dogs (95 deployed and 55 non-deployed). Generalized additive models (GAM) were used to examine the relationship between independent variables including age, sex, deployment status, FEMA certification type, and breed with each behavior as the dependent variable. The GAM model was used so the age and the relationship between age and deployment status could be modeled nonparametrically with a function that changes over the range of the variable in nonlinear ways. There was no effect of deployment status on any of the C-BARQ subscales except that deployed dogs had higher trainability (P = 0.03). The nonlinear smooth terms for age were significant for trainability (P