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Humans and dogs commonly share the same domestic environment. Europe, and Italy specifically, have a substantial and growing dog population. Potentially zoonotic parasites may be harbored even by dogs receiving regular veterinary care. Thus, transmission of zoonotic or potentially zoonotic parasites to owners and their families should not be underestimated. Frequently, endoparasite infections occur as a subclinical infection and clinicopathological alterations have been documented including anemia, hypoalbuminemia, and eosinophilia. The aim of this large retrospective secondary data study was to analyze coprological endoparasite results and putative risk factors obtained from owned dogs, through a 9-year-period (2011-2019). Possible associations between diagnosed endoparasites and sex, age, seasonality, and year of examination were evaluated. Additionally, parasitological diagnoses were combined to complete blood count parameters and biochemical profiles, when available, to check for any possible hematological alteration from parasitism. A total of 1,972 dogs were evaluated for endoparasites using common fecal diagnostic tests over a 9-year period. The overall proportion of endoparasite-positive animals was 10%. The most common endoparasites detected were Cystoisospora spp. (3%), Toxocara canis (2.8%), Giardia duodenalis (1.6%), and Trichuris vulpis (1.2%). Of these parasites detected, Toxocara poses the greatest zoonotic risk, while Giardia species are considered to have a low potential to be zoonotic. There was no significant diagnostic trend across the years through the study period. Dogs were more frequently diagnosed endoparasite-positive when young and during cold seasons compared to the baselines of mature dogs and warm seasons. The clinicopathological profiles indicated that parasitized dogs had mild hematological alterations. The frequency of detected potentially zoonotic endoparasites in this study highlights that the risk should not be underestimated. Parasitic infection was found to be mostly dependent on age and season. Having this information may help clinicians to develop anthelmintic protocols to reduce the risk of transmission., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Morandi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Smallholder dairy farmers (SDF) in developing countries often have limited understanding on the importance of cow comfort. We conducted a randomized controlled trial with 124 cows on 114 Kenyan SDF to determine the status of cow comfort, to assess compliance to farm-specific cow comfort recommendations, and to evaluate the impacts of the farm-specific interventions on cow comfort. On the first farm visit, stall dimensions and characteristics (e.g. stall base hardness and hygiene) were measured and categorized as adequate, marginal or inadequate/absent based on cow size. Where measurements were not adequate, farm-specific cow comfort recommendations were provided in written and oral form to the randomly allocated intervention group of farms (n = 74). On the second farm visit two months later, the same measurements were taken, and percent compliance to the recommendations was evaluated. A discomfort index was arithmetically calculated based on the stall base hardness (scale was 1-3 for soft to hard) and hygiene (scale was 1-5 for clean to dirty). Multivariable linear regression models were used to determine specific associations with the discomfort index. On the first visit, the mean stall base hardness and stall hygiene scores were 1.7 and 2.3, respectively, for a mean discomfort index of 4.0. Intervention farmers were given 3.9 comfort recommendations, on average, and complied with 2.1 recommendations, significantly improving the discomfort index at visit two to 3.3. The overall compliance to the recommendations was 49.0%. In a final model, the interaction between intervention group and visit number was significantly associated with discomfort index, indicating that after adjusting for baseline discomfort indices, the intervention led to better cow comfort. Specifically, bedding type and neck rail positioning were significantly associated with discomfort index. We concluded that farmers can substantially improve cow comfort on SDF by providing recommendations to them. Farm advisors should include cow comfort recommendations to SDF., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare no conflicts of interest in all aspects of this study., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)