Fig. 2

Serum cortisol in 30 healthy and 14 dogs with fractures before and after morphine administration. *Dogs without previous analgesia (None, n = 3) prior to inclusion to the study had significantly (p = 0.02) lower cortisol concentration than dogs in the other analgesia groups. No significant difference was found between unknown (Unknown, n = 3), carprofen (Carprofen, n = 4), or morphine (Morphine, n = 4) analgesia groups. No significant difference in cortisol concentration was found between before (Before) and after (After) morphine administration in dogs with traumatic bone fractures (n = 14). The upper vertical line (whisker) refers to maximal value and lower whisker refers to minimal value. The length of the box refers to interquartile range from quartile 1–3 (percentile 25–75) where the top of the box is quartile 3 and the bottom is quartile 1. The circle symbol in the box refers to mean and the horizontal line in the box is median