Welcome to the first study update following the announcement of the dog owner pilot study!
Study update
This month was mostly spent on recruitment of study participants, replying to queries about the study and sending out sample collection kits. Emails have been sent to all UCD Colleges, and we were active on Twitter to attract more people also. We are happy to say that we already have more than half of the participants we need for this study!
Out of approximately 60 emails we received expressing interest, 11 people could not participate, mainly due to either the dog or the owner having taken antibiotics, and a few people had gut health conditions which unfortunately excluded them from the study also. Thankfully, the interest in the study is quite large and we are looking forward to more people participating!
The samples that we received have been stored at -70 °C and will be processed (aliquoted and DNA will be extracted) once we have a larger number of samples available.
Study results
We collected dog breed data anonymously from our survey software (Qualtrics) to see what breeds are involved in the study. Most of the study participants own Labrador Retrievers or Labrador crosses, but we also have some border collies in the study, as well as Springer Spaniels and terriers.
Photos of dogs from the study
Some of you have sent me lovely photos of your dogs. I think it would be amazing to see all the dogs from our study, so if you are happy to share the photos of your dogs with everyone, I would love it if you sent me some photos and let me know that you are happy to post them via email or Twitter – and they will appear on the next email update. You can email the dog photos to (opens in a new window)dogownermicrobiome@ucd.ie
And with that, we would like to also thank everyone for participating in the study and wish you all a Merry Christmas!
