Our second monthly study update is here!
We hope you had a great Christmas break and New Year celebrations. I heard from a few of you this month saying that you or your children were sick with Covid-19, so I wanted to again express well-wishes to all of you.
On a happier note, our study is progressing well, and we are delighted to share some updates!
Study recruitment
We currently have 38 study participants, which is fantastic! The minimum number of people-dog pairs we need is 40, we only need 2 more to achieve that. We should have enough budget to recruit up to 48 participants, and we are aware of the fact that sometimes people withdraw from the study, so we will keep recruiting beyond the 40 people we need. Most of our new January participants came from:
- people who previously emailed us but could not go through the paperwork before Christmas
- people who could not participate last year due to taking antibiotics or the dog being too young, that now became eligible
- friendly referrals from our lab staff and veterinary clinicians
On that note, if you know someone who might be interested in the study, we would be delighted for you to let them know about the study – typically I get forwarded email addresses of people that are potentially interested, and then send them all the relevant information.
Also, currently 13 dogs in the study are Labradors or Labrador mixes.
Future plans – lab work, hypotheses
The next step of our study when all the samples are received will be DNA extraction. For the non-scientists among us, here’s how that will work:
Photos of your dogs!!!!
I really enjoyed receiving photos of the dogs from the study, they are all beautiful!
Some of the lovely dogs are included below:
If anyone else would like to share photos, I am happy to include them in the next newsletter :)
Once again, it is a pleasure to work with everyone, thank you to all our participants!
Kind Regards
Dagmara and UCD Dog Owner Microbiome Team