Category Archives: Dog Biology

01/4/12

Vets, Sex, Disease, and Aging (with McGreevy)

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.

 

McGreevy believes that more vets should be savvy regarding dog behaviour, and how diseases can affect behaviour.  Vets need to be more educated regarding dog behaviour.  Unknowledgeable vets risk giving harmful advice, which potentially could lead to dog bites.  McGreevy believes that dog behaviour is important, especially considering many dogs surrendered to shelters are done so due to their behaviour.

 

Desexing

Older dog

Photos © Ruthless Photos

Male and female dogs act differently even before puberty.  (In my last litter, the boy puppy never squatted, but peed from a standing position as soon as he was capable of standing.)  Desexing does not nullify these behavioural differences, as some of them become habit before desexing.

Do dogs know when another dog is desexed?  According to Paul McGreevy, no.  Dogs cannot smell or sense that another animal is desexed.  They may be able to smell that the other animal has less hormones, but they would not know the reason. A desexed male would smell like a juvenile male.  A desexed female would smell like any other female that is not in season.

It is unknown if behaviours change due to desexing.  No evidence exists that proves that ‘too much testosterone’ is the cause of problematic behaviours to begin with.

 

Obesity

Desexing leads to increase risk of obesity.  Almost ½ of domesticated dogs are obese or chubby. This leads to disease and shorter lives.

(On the other hand, McGreevy noted that having a dog reduces childhood obesity, and said, “We could get good funding for that!”)

 

Aging

The likelihood of dementia in dogs occurs on a similar age curve as in humans.  There are over 30 different behavioural changes that occur when a dog ages.

He mentioned some of the research being undertaken by Golden Oldies.  One of the more valuable bits of their website is a senior dog scoring system, which may help dog owners identify signs of dementia earlier.

 

We are nearing the end of our McGreevy series, with only a couple more posts to go. Stay tuned!

 

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.

12/31/11

Dog Sense (McGreevy)

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.

 

McGreevy mentioned various dog sensory capacity stats throughout his seminar.  This is only a brief post, but still interesting!

Sense of Smell

Dogs sense of smell is 100 times stronger than people’s.  As dog owners and trainers, we need to understand how ‘smelly’ the world is for dogs, and what that means for dogs when they’re trying to concentrate on us!

Smelling is a key skill for dogs, but there is no decent way to test the olfaction of dogs.  McGreevy suggested that cognitive function may be linked to sense of smell.

 

 

Hearing

Dogs have better hearing than us.  In particular, they can hear stuff that is higher in frequency than humans can hear.  The distance between a dog’s ears predict how much they can hear (but I don’t remember the equation, sorry!).

 

Dog Sight

Dogs are quite attuned to picking up visual signals.  Different dog breeds have different retinas, and so see in different ways.

 

Of course, there is a lot more that could be said about dog senses, but these are just what McGreevy mentioned over the course of the seminar.

 

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.