Signaux d’Évitement

La communication canine n'est pas simple. C'est un langage difficile à interpréter surtout si l'ont ne connait pas la vrai signification du signe ou comportement. Je vous présente donc un petite série d'article qui vous expliquera comment mieux comprendre le langage de votre chien. Cliquer sur le titre et vous y retrouverez des images et leurs explications.

Gaby Dufresne-Cyr, CBT

By Gaby Dufresne-Cyr

Canine Clarification – Carnivore vs Omnivore

The term carnivore refers to the two-hundred-sixty different species of meat eaters. Carnivore literally means flesh devourer. The animals from this order are classified based on teeth, claws, and binocular vision adapted for catching and eating other animals. The order includes canidae (canines), felidae (felines), and ursidae (ursus AKA bears). The carnivore order includes carnivores, omnivores and primarily herbivores like the Giant Panda.

Carnivores have incisors, canines, and carnassials (premolars and molars) teeth (see canine skull to the left). Canines are designed to grab, kill, and dismember, incisors dissect, and carnassials cut the bigger meat pieces into easy to swallow sizes. Carnassial teeth are basically scissor like teeth designed to cut meat and swallow without chewing. The acid in the animal’s stomach will digest and extract the necessary nutrients. Dogs have an extra molar behind the carnassial tooth designed to crush bones.

Omnivores, such as bears, have flattened molar-like carnassials designed to chew vegetation, breaking down fiber, in order to extract complex sugars, vitamins, and minerals (see ursus skull to the right). Unlike cats and dogs, bears can thrive on either a meat or vegetarian diet for a certain amount of time. Canines can eat vegetation; unfortunately, they lack the ability to chew vegetation and extract complex sugars, vitamins, and minerals. Felines are obligate carnivores which means they need to eat meat in order to thrive and live long healthy lives. Cats cannot live on a strict vegetarian or vegan diet.

Raw Food Diets

Because dogs lack the flattened carnassial molar, dogs have not evolved to thrive on a strict vegetarian diet. You canine companion will survive on a vegetarian diet but will have an unhealthy coat, dandruff, flatulence, enormous stools, drink excessively, and be bloated. Conversely, raw food diets are by far the best possible options for our furry friends. Dogs and cats who eat raw foods have healthy coats, lack dandruff, have no flatulence, have reduced and odorless stools, drink less, and do not suffer from obesity.

For carnivores, a balanced raw food diet consists of meat, bone, and organs. The cat’s raw food diet should contain small grounded bones and be devoid of vegetables. Dogs can tolerate vegetables a little better; if added to the diet, they should be grounded, pureed, but never cooked. Same goes for bones! Grains and cereals do not need to be added to the diet. Manufacturers add grains and cereals to pet foods to bring costs.

I will end on these thought provoking words. To decide one’s diet should consist exclusively of meat, vegetation, or a combination of both is a personal choice and should never be imposed on an animal whose evolutionary dietary needs have not caught up with the rest of its genus.

Voici un article écrit par l'une des participante sur son expérience de Doga.
Sandra et le Chien

Post your pet’s picture on the Dogue Shop Facebook page and you will automatically get a chance to win a Nina Ottosson - Magic - interactive toy*

Increase your chances to win - post a picture of All your Pets**

Contest ends March 20th 2012 at 12:00 (noon) - Prize winner will be randomly drawn at the Dogue Shop March 20th 2012 at 13:00

Good Luck!



* Prize is non transferable or exchangeable, and has no monetary value. Shipping costs will be covered by winner.
** Open to cats and dogs of all breeds. Other pets will not be considered due to the nature of the prize.

Je profite de l'occasion pour faire l'annonce officiel de mon association avec Georges-Henri Arenstein du Centre l'Authentique comme zoothérapeute et éducateur canin. De plus, le 11 juillet 2011 le Dogue Shop, en collaboration avec le Parc Safari, a participé au tournage d'un épisode de zoothérapie avec les loups et les jeunes du Centre Jeunesse Emploi - Centre-Ville qui sera diffusée en novembre prochain.

Starting January 2012 I will teach doga. What is doga you ask? Doga is the art of doing yoga with your dog!

That being said, my objective is very different from the common doga practices seen in western Canada or the United-States. My vision of doga is to have human and canine practice yoga poses together. I do not intend to teache yoga to people with dogs "hanging" around nor do I wish to have people place their dogs in yoga positions. To teach one's dog to practice yoga helps establish and maintain a positive relationship all the while developing a sense of humour.

Yoga poses come naturally to canines, thus, my goal is to tech people how to tech their pets. If you are interested in learning more about doga, please contact me and I will be delighted to discuss or demonstrate doga with my canine assistant Albear. For registration please visit the doga page!

Cheers and hope to see you inour doga classes in the new year.

Gaby Dufrense-Cyr

Wolf Pictures
I have added pictures from the Animal Behaviour Apprenticeship program held at Park Safari from July 10th 2011.
After a long and extremely hot weekend, the students left with a new understanding of canine behaviour. 
You can click here to see the pictures.

I thought it would be interesting to write a few stats about the Dogue Shop web site.

Visitors come from all over the world to visit the Dogue Shop web site: Australia, Austria, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Burundi, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and United States.

The strangest word/term searched last month was "le chanteur shop dog". In French le chanteur means singer.

The top five Links from other web sites: Google (46), Dog Seminar Directory (29), CJAD 800 and Facebook (14), Blogger (10)

Strangest link source that visited the Dogue Shop was celulite.golbnet.com

Top search engine is a no brainer: Google!

The most visited Dogue Shop web page was the Dogue’s Broholmer

By Gaby Dufresne-Cyr

Things you will probably never encounter or read.

- You will most likely never read a book titled Using "Tsit" to Modify Speach. A book on how to use and master the pronunciation of tsit to improve speech written by the Russian speech therapist Dr. Vlad Von Talksalote.

- You will probably never find a wolf trainer use tsit (combined with poke) to modify C. lupus' dominant-aggressive behavior towards unfamiliar people.

- You will definitely never see or use a clicker that goes tsit.

- You will undoubtedly never read or find a scientific book about animal behavior modification written by Dr. Dog Whisperer on the selves of your local book store within the next 50 years.

- You will certainly never see an animal behaviorist place an elephant in a calm-submissive position in order to reach a calm-submissive state.

- You will absolutely never see a silver-back gorilla use tsit within his family.

- You will unquestionably never find a psychology university program offering a course entitled Tsit 101, An Introduction to Behaviour Modification. Given by Dr. Johndoe Noitall.

- You will certainly encounter many people doing many things and telling you many stories; but, most of all you will discover that in the grand scheme of things The tsit Philosophy just doesn’t work.

Feral dog* research strives to answer the fundamental question what constitutes normal dog behaviour? Unfortunately, the answers create more questions. I read many research papers and none of them can answer the question Do feral dogs exhibit emotional signals (appeasement/avoidance signals, AKA calming signals) towards unfamiliar humans and/or other feral dogs? This question prompted me to start researching feral dog populations and two years in, I am still in the process of collecting data.

My hypothesis is feral dogs do not exhibit emotional signals towards people because they have no need to communicate with us. The socialisation period is a time when an animal learns to identify with it's environment and to communicate. Feral dogs do not need to communicate with people; consequently, there is no need to interpret emotional signals. The lack of socialisation during this critical period of development is detrimental to the human-animal relationship.

Preliminary research seems to confirm this assumption; as such, the findings might call for a reclassification of certain species within the Canis genus. The new classification might look a little like this: Canis lupus would refer to the grey wolf, Canis familiaris would refer to feral dogs, and Canis domesticus would refer to the domestic dog.

Although wolves, coyotes, feral dogs and domestic dogs use the same language to communicate, we must recognise the cultural differences and adapt to their needs. Ultimately, the reorganisation of a species classification is not important; our role is to address the physical and behavioural needs of each species.
In the mean time, I will have to endure many long days on the beaches of South-America looking for feral dogs ;-)

* Feral dogs have not been socialised, cared for, or feed by humans.