Canine Olfaction: Scent, Sign, and Situation

Revisiting the concept of behavior patterns in animal behavior with an example from food-caching sequences in Wolves (Canis lupus), Coyotes (Canis latrans), and Red Foxes (Vulpes vulpes)

“…We can easily make the point that the most "cognitive" part of the behavior lies in the "planning" stages (e.g., site inspection, pawing). Beyond that, as in other simple behaviors (e.g., appetitive olfactory behaviors), motor and motivational factors are truly "controlling" behavior or at least contribute heavily to its modulation and regulation (Gadbois and Reeve, 2014).…”

Biomedical Scent Detection Dogs: Would They Pass as a Health Technology?

“…The AFC method also has a disadvantage due to a memory load it may impose on the detection dog. Gadbois and Reeve (Gadbois and Reeve 2014; have shown that the accuracy of canines decreases significantly the further down the target is in the lineup because of a tax on the dogs' memory processing. The goal of biomedical scent detection is to assess the sensory-perceptual abilities of dogs to distinguish scents extremely similar to each other, and not make the process a memory load task of a past event.…”

“…The goal of biomedical scent detection is to assess the sensory-perceptual abilities of dogs to distinguish scents extremely similar to each other, and not make the process a memory load task of a past event. Therefore, to avoid the tax on memory, the use of discrimination tasks of 2 or 3 choices is more favourable (Gadbois and Reeve 2014;Koivusalo et al 2017). An even more elegant solution is a pure detection task, i.e.…”

“…Canines' sense of smell has been utilized successfully for a long time for different purposes, such as detection of explosives, narcotics, and bed bugs, to name just a few. Biomedical scent detection (or medical scent detection) is an emerging method that uses the canine olfactory capacity for identifying the scent profiles of diseases, such as different types of cancers (Moser and McCulloch 2010;Jezierski et al 2015), diabetes (Gadbois and Reeve 2014;Hardin et al 2015) or the presence of pathogenic micro-organisms (Bomers et al 2014;Bryce et al 2017;Koivusalo et al 2017;Koskinen et al 2017). It is the combination of the acuity of the sense of smell with the ability to learn by operant conditioning that makes dogs potential biodetectors for different tasks (Pirrone and Albertini 2017).…”

Dogs and children: match made in heaven or hell?

“…Others who are fearful of an approaching dog may simply stiffen, stare at the dog or shrink away from it, parents may pull their child away, and some children will scream at the sight of a dog. In all cases, these people will be emitting fear pheromones, which can cause anxiety in the dog (Horowitz ; Gadbois & Reeve ). In addition, the dog may find the people's behaviour threatening or frightening.…”