Development of a detailed canine gait analysis method for evaluating harnesses: A pilot study

Zsófia Pálya; Kristóf Rácz; Gergely Nagymáté; Rita M. Kiss

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0264299

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 24, 2021
9 Sep 2021 Decision Letter - Ewa Tomaszewska, Editor PONE-D-21-02564Developing a detailed canine gait analysis method for evaluating harnesses: a pilot studyPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Rita M. Kiss, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by October 15 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: This study sought to present a detailed method for canine gait acquisition and analysis addressing the need to correctly assess dog harnesses, which should adapt to the breed, size, and use scenarios. In particular, the authors hypothesized that the presence of the harnesses can alter the canine gait. For this reason, the author implemented this experimental pilot study to quantify how different harnesses affected the dogs’ kinematics during walking with respect to the unleashed condition. Four trained dogs and different harnesses (three provided by Juliuus-K9 and a one custom-made) with leash and without leash were included in the analysis. The study was approved by an Ethical Committee in 2015. The acquisition protocol was based on the use of 25 markers and allowed to estimate 18 joint angles, 4 paw movement paths in the sagittal plane and a wide set of spatio-temporal parameters, which can be normalized on multiple gait cycles. The authors reported information about marker trajectories processing and results are then reported with respect to the identified breeds and harnesses. The authors claimed that the methods they proposed can be used in comparative assessments; furthermore, they reported that all the analysed harnesses altered dogs kinematics during plain walking on treadmill, but the system was able to provide useful information about a possible optimal choice. All the data are available without restriction. General Comment The hypothesis at the basis of this paper is clearly reported as far as the main objective. Both the experimental phase and data analysis are written with a good level of details; the analysis in particular was performed very well, and the synthesis of the obtained results is extremely appreciable. Although the methodology in itself is not that innovative, the application to canine movements provides useful hints and novel perspective. The structure of the article seems to be precise (Abstract, Introduction, Methodology [with subheadings], Results, Discussion). Experimental phase and data analysis seem to be clearly reported and are coherent with the work objectives. Several minor concerns are hereinafter reported. The use of the English language seems to be correct. Specific Comments Title Ok. I would only consider to change “developing” with “development of”. Abstract In general, this section is quite ok. Please, could you report some quantitative information about the most interesting findings you obtained. It is important to get – even from the abstract – why you thought that your method is reliable and the differences you were able to highlight. Introduction In general also this section is ok; I would only state better the main limitations of the actual studies and the main novelty and innovation of the methodology you proposed, not only in light of the specific application you dealt with (i.e., harnesses). Methods • Page 3/15 Line 79-80: Please justify the number of dogs you involved in this study; although this is a pilot study, the reader needs further information about the choice of the canine subjects and how this can affect the possible generalization of the main findings (to be discuss in the Discussion section). • Page 3 Line 78. A period “.” seems to miss at the end of the sentence. • Page 3 Table 1. Please provide further information about the gait patterns. • Page 4/15 Line 91: Please give further information about the third-party harness. Why did you call it “third-party”? Were Julius-K9s’ ones not third-party harnesses? In figure 1 there is no representation of this forth harness. • Page 4/15 Line 101: I think that there is a typo here “[refence: Motive]”, and a correctly reported reference. • Page 4/15 Line 103: Please provide numerical information about the accuracy you obtained in your specific setup after volume calibration. • Page 4/15 Line 122-124: Please justify the choice of placing the marker on the harness here or discuss any possible issue in the Discussion section. Harness could significantly move with respect to the dog’s body, couldn’t it? • Page 4/15 Line 127: Please provide more detail about the “clean up” phase. • Page 5/15 Line 183: Please justify the use of 2D projections, or otherwise, discuss this as a possibile actual limitation of this study. Results Very well reported both graphically and in the main text. Discussion In general, this section is ok since it discuss your main findings. However is quite missing a comparison with the current literature, at least, where information are available. Furthermore, you tried to underline possible limitation at page 12/15 line 331-338, but you have to underline better any issue that can limit the possible generalization of your results (including the methodological ones, as – for instance – the choice of estimating 2D joint angles). Conclusions • Page 13/15 Line 359-362: This sentence can be hardly supported by the results of this only study. If there are differences, with such a small sample size it is not quite possible to reliably ascribe them to the only type of harnesses. References The references to previous works seem to be precise, wide and up-to-date. Figures Very good. Tables Good. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes:** Nicola Francesco Lopomo [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264299.r001
Revision 1
5 Oct 2021 Author Response Respose to Reviewer Dear Dr. Lopomo, We have received your review of your article, and we would like to thank you for your extraordinarily thorough and relevant questions and suggestions! In the following section we will address each point you raised to the best of our abilities. Please find the full response with all the listed modifications in the attached PDF! Title: I would only consider to change “developing” with “development of”. We do agree with this suggestion, and modified the title accordingly! Abstract: In general, this section is quite ok. Please, could you report some quantitative information about the most interesting findings you obtained. It is important to get – even from the abstract – why you thought that your method is reliable and the differences you were able to highlight. Thank you for the insightful comment. We have extended the abstract with some more detail and qualitative results of the statistical analysis. Also, we‘ve reworded the beginning not to exceed 300 words. Introduction: In general also this section is ok; I would only state better the main limitations of the actual studies and the main novelty and innovation of the methodology you proposed, not only in light of the specific application you dealt with (i.e., harnesses). Thank you for briging our attention tot his point! We have changed the wording of the last paragraph of the introduction, to better reflect the novelty of our study, which is the level of complexity in the analysed parameters, and to point out that this method can also be used in research of canine motion that does not deal with harnesses! Methods: 1. Page 3/15 Line 79-80: Please justify the number of dogs you involved in this study; although this is a pilot study, the reader needs further information about the choice of the canine subjects and how this can affect the possible generalization of the main findings (to be discuss in the Discussion section). We have no other justification for it other than that’s how many we could find whose owners were willing to participate, and train their dogs beforehand for walking on a treadmill. We changed the wording for this to be more clearer in the paper. 2. Page 3 Line 78. A period “.” seems to miss at the end of the sentence. Thank you, we added the missing period! 3. Page 3 Table 1. Please provide further information about the gait patterns. We have added a reference with detailed descriptions of every canine gait pattern. (Table 1. Participating dogs and used harnesses. Gait patterns were identified by eye by an expert. Detailed description of each gait pattern can be found in [18]. [...] 18. Zink C, Carr BJ. Locomotion and Athletic Performance. In: Zink C, Van DykeJB, editors. Canine Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation, Second Edition. NewYork, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2018. pp. 23–42.) 4.Page 4/15 Line 91: Please give further information about the third-party harness. Why did you call it “third-party”? Were Julius-K9s’ ones not third-party harnesses? In figure 1 there is no representation of this forth harness. The owner of dog 4 brought this harness to the measurement, and it was a generic non-restrictive type. Since the owner had no information about the manufacturer, we were not able to name any. This also means that we do not have a right to publish any picture of it. One for sure, it was not a Julis-K9 manufactured harness. Thank you for bringing this shortcoming to our attention; we have extended the description in the Methods section. 5. Page 4/15 Line 101: I think that there is a typo here “[refence: Motive]”, and a correctly reported reference. Thank you for this remark. Further information about the calibration accuracy has been added to this section. 6. Page 4/15 Line 122-124: Please justify the choice of placing the marker on the harness here or discuss any possible issue in the Discussion section. Harness could significantly move with respect to the dog’s body, couldn’t it? We strongly agree that this point should have been brought up in the discussion as a limitation of the study from the beginning. The harness can indeed move compared to the body considerably, but unfortunately in cases where the harness covered an anatomical landmark, we had no other way to get approximate position data of the given anatomical landmark (FR2) with the given measurement setup. 7. Page 4/15 Line 127: Please provide more detail about the “clean up” phase. Unfortunately our previous wording made it look like there was some additional clean up that took place before labelling and exporting relevant sections of data, when in reality the labelling and exporting process was the “clean up”. Thank you for pointing out the ambiguous wording of this subsection! We have rewritten it to more clearly describe the process. (A technician first processed the recorded marker data in Motive as follows: markers were labelled according to the used marker-set (Fig. 3) for each recording. Next, a section of homogeneous gait between receiving treats was selected for each trial, and exported into a text file containing metadata of the measurement in a header – like frame rate and130total number of frames – and the marker position data for each frame. For all further calculations, MATLAB (R2020b) was used [16].) 8. Page 5/15 Line 183: Please justify the use of 2D projections, or otherwise, discuss this as a possibile actual limitation of this study. While we would have liked to used proper anatomical joint angles, the marker configuration required for it would have been much more complex, and very impractical on the smaller dogs with the camera system of our laboratory. We have added a paragraph to the discussion about this limitation explaining the requirements for calculating 3D join angles! (A limitation of the method is using projected 2D joint angles instead of anatomically defined 3D joint angles (flexion-extension, abduction-adduction, internal-external rotation) for the limbs. Proper calculation of these angles require information about the 3D rigid-body motion of each segment of the limbs, which in turn require at least 3 markers on each body segment. While this would be plausible for larger dogs, in case of small dogs the markers would have to be too close for each other for our current setup. The possibility of anatomically defined joint angles on all sizes of dogs could be further explored with a more specialised setup, where the cameras are placed in the immediate surroundings of the treadmill. 2D joint angles are also more comparable with single camera measurements, where joint angles are determined on a single video recording of the dog from the side.) Discussion: In general, this section is ok since it discuss your main findings. However is quite missing a comparison with the current literature, at least, where information are available. Furthermore, you tried to underline possible limitation at page 12/15 line 331-338, but you have to underline better any issue that can limit the possible generalization of your results (including the methodological ones, as – for instance – the choice of estimating 2D joint angles). Thank you for pointing out the missing comparison with the literature! Although not a lot of data can be found on the effects of harnesses, those we found do not contradict our results. A section has been added to the discussion comparing the results. The limitations noted in previous suggestions (2D projections of joint angles and marker placement on harness) has also been addressed in the discussion. Conclusion: Page 13/15 Line 359-362: This sentence can be hardly supported by the results of this only study. If there are differences, with such a small sample size it is not quite possible to reliably ascribe them to the only type of harnesses. Thank you for this observation. We have changed the wording of the last paragraph of the Conclusion, and the statement improved, as can be supported by our results accordingly. Some possible advances of the study have also been added to the paragraph. Based on your comments and suggestions we have revised our manuscript, and we hope that our revisions prove to be satisfactory! Thank you again for your insightful critique. It helped us greatly in bringing our research up to par with the standards expected by the scientific community! Best regards: Zsófia Pálya, Kristóf Rácz, Gergely Nagymáté & Rita M. Kiss Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: rev2 - response_for_editor_K9.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264299.r002
27 Oct 2021 Decision Letter - Ewa Tomaszewska, Editor PONE-D-21-02564R1Development of a detailed canine gait analysis method for evaluating harnesses: a pilot studyPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Rita M. Kiss, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by November 15 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Ewa Tomaszewska, DVM Ph.D Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: (No Response) ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: I would like to thank the authors for the great effort they realized to answer all the concerns arisen during the first round of review. However, several issues are still open and need further clarification: Question: 1. Page 3/15 Line 79-80: Please justify the number of dogs you involved in this study; although this is a pilot study, the reader needs further information about the choice of the canine subjects and how this can affect the possible generalization of the main findings (to be discuss in the Discussion section). Answer: We have no other justification for it other than that’s how many we could find whose owners were willing to participate, and train their dogs beforehand for walking on a treadmill. We changed the wording for this to be more clearer in the paper. Further Comment: I guess that the choice of the number and breeds of the dogs should be justified better; a scientific approach requires that the sample size and characteristics must be defined before recruitment starts. Since the number of dog is extremely reduced and this could impact the possibility to generalize your approach, please state at your best the hypotheses at the basis of your choice. Question: 4.Page 4/15 Line 91: Please give further information about the third-party harness. Why did you call it “third-party”? Were Julius-K9s’ ones not third-party harnesses? In figure 1 there is no representation of this forth harness. Answer: The owner of dog 4 brought this harness to the measurement, and it was a generic non-restrictive type. Since the owner had no information about the manufacturer, we were not able to name any. This also means that we do not have a right to publish any picture of it. One for sure, it was not a Julis-K9 manufactured harness. Thank you for bringing this shortcoming to our attention; we have extended the description in the Methods section. Further Comment: Unfortunately you did not get my hint. I underlined the fact that your study, although you reported that it is not, seems to be sponsored by Julius-K9 (as you reported, however, the three harnesses from Julius-K9 was provided free of charge by the manufacturer...that is a sort of sponsorship). For sure, you can, but you have to report better the main hypotheses at the basis of your research and why you did chose only Julus-K9 harnesses and, more specifically, those models. Since this is not a sponsored study, the 3rd party harness should be treated as those ones provided by Julius-K9, maybe using it as reference. You can provide a wider description and a sketch of this harness, if useful to better understand your results. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes:** Nicola Francesco Lopomo [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264299.r003
Revision 2
4 Jan 2022 Author Response Revision Round 2: Dear Dr. Lopomo, We have studied your suggestions and we would like to thank you for your constructive comments again. The responses of all the comments and recommendations are listed below. Comment #1: Question: Page 3/15 Line 79-80: Please justify the number of dogs you involved in this study; although this is a pilot study, the reader needs further information about the choice of the canine subjects and how this can affect the possible generalization of the main findings (to be discuss in the Discussion section). Answer: We have no other justification for it other than that’s how many we could find whose owners were willing to participate, and train their dogs beforehand for walking on a treadmill. We changed the wording for this to be more clearer in the paper. Further Comment: I guess that the choice of the number and breeds of the dogs should be justified better; a scientific approach requires that the sample size and characteristics must be defined before recruitment starts. Since the number of dog is extremely reduced and this could impact the possibility to generalize your approach, please state at your best the hypotheses at the basis of your choice. We do understand the concern about the sample size of the pilot study. We did aim to have at least one small, medium and large size dog in the study to confirm the method is suitable for all sizes. Thankfully, all categories were represented with the dogs we could recruit. We added a few regards about this to the text of the manuscript. Comment #2: Question: 4.Page 4/15 Line 91: Please give further information about the third-party harness. Why did you call it “third-party”? Were Julius-K9s’ ones not third-party harnesses? In figure 1 there is no representation of this forth harness. Answer: The owner of dog 4 brought this harness to the measurement, and it was a generic non-restrictive type. Since the owner had no information about the manufacturer, we were not able to name any. This also means that we do not have a right to publish any picture of it. One for sure, it was not a Julis-K9 manufactured harness. Thank you for bringing this shortcoming to our attention; we have extended the description in the Methods section. Further Comment: Unfortunately you did not get my hint. I underlined the fact that your study, although you reported that it is not, seems to be sponsored by Julius-K9 (as you reported, however, the three harnesses from Julius-K9 was provided free of charge by the manufacturer...that is a sort of sponsorship). For sure, you can, but you have to report better the main hypotheses at the basis of your research and why you did chose only Julus-K9 harnesses and, more specifically, those models. Since this is not a sponsored study, the 3rd party harness should be treated as those ones provided by Julius-K9, maybe using it as reference. You can provide a wider description and a sketch of this harness, if useful to better understand your results. Thank you for this insightfull remark. We added some more general regards about the selected harnesses. Moreover, we would like to point out that in the case of Julius-K9 company the production takes place in Hungary. Upon our request they offered to manufacture the examined harrnesses without the reflective elements, thus facilitating our research work. In connection with harness bring by Dog 4 owner, we were also possible to find out where it was purchased and whether it was an own-branded product. In light of this, the “3rd party” name has been changed to “Fressnapf own-branded”. Based on the measurement photos and the suggestion, a sketch of this harness was added to the Figure 1. Based on your comments and suggestions we have revised our manuscript, and we hope that our revisions proves to be satisfactory! Thank you again for your insightful critique. It helped us greatly in bringing our research up to par with the standards expected by the scientific community! Best regards: Zsófia Pálya, Kristóf Rácz, Gergely Nagymáté & Rita M. Kiss Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: rev3 - response_for_editor_K9.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264299.r004
9 Feb 2022 Decision Letter - Ewa Tomaszewska, Editor Development of a detailed canine gait analysis method for evaluating harnesses: a pilot study PONE-D-21-02564R2 Dear Dr. Rita M. Kiss, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Ewa Tomaszewska, DVM Ph.D Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264299.r005
Formally Accepted
14 Feb 2022 Acceptance Letter - Ewa Tomaszewska, Editor PONE-D-21-02564R2 Development of a detailed canine gait analysis method for evaluating harnesses: a pilot study Dear Dr. Kiss: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Professor Ewa Tomaszewska Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264299.r006

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