Over the last few years, oxytocin (OT) administration to investigate the role of the oxytocinergic system in the social behavior of dogs has become of more and more interest. To date, the most common OT administration method for dogs is the intranasal spray commonly used for humans. Due to the different nasal conformation of dogs and the unpleasantness of the procedure, most dogs need to be restrained to allow administration. This has 2 main drawbacks—it may hinder reliable administration, which might lead to tremendous variance in the uptake of OT across individuals and it is likely to be stressful for the dogs. Alternatively, a vaporizer mask can be used to administer aerolized OT and dogs can be trained to voluntarily enter the mask, which might enable a more reliable administration without having to restrain the dogs. The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of these 2 methods to identify a reliable non-invasive method for exogenous OT administration, thereby assisting future research on the role of OT in canines. We administered OT to pet dogs using either an intranasal spray bottle or a vaporizer mask and assessed urinary OT concentrations as a measure of OT uptake. We found that only when administered using a vaporizer mask, OT significantly increased in all subjects, while using a spray bottle led to considerable variance in OT uptake and an inconsistent increase in urinary OT concentrations across individuals. These results suggest that using a vaporizer mask should be preferred over using an intranasal spray bottle for OT administration in dogs. If not available, experimenters should at least monitor OT uptake after administration using spray bottles, to evaluate the success of the method.

在过去的几年中，催产素（OT）管理以研究催产素能系统在狗的社交行为中的作用越来越引起人们的兴趣。迄今为止，用于狗的最普通的OT施用方法是通常用于人类的鼻内喷雾剂。由于狗的鼻部构造不同，并且操作过程不愉快，因此需要限制大多数狗的使用范围。这有两个主要缺点-可能会妨碍可靠的给药，这可能会导致个体对OT的摄取发生巨大差异，并且可能给狗带来压力。可替代地，可以使用蒸发器面罩来施用经气雾化的OT，并且可以训练狗自愿进入面罩，这可以实现更可靠的施用而不必束缚狗。这项研究的目的是比较这两种方法的功效，以确定一种可靠的非侵入性外源性OT管理方法，从而有助于进一步研究OT在犬类中的作用。我们使用鼻内喷雾瓶或气化面罩对宠物狗施用OT，并评估尿中OT浓度作为OT摄取的量度。我们发现，仅当使用蒸发器面罩给药时，所有受试者的OT才会显着增加，而使用喷雾瓶会导致OT吸收的显着差异以及各个人尿OT浓度的不一致增加。这些结果表明，使用蒸发器面罩比使用鼻内喷雾瓶对狗进行OT给药更可取。如果没有，