Wildlife Ethology and Canine Olfaction Lab

Also this one, just a few months ago:

Kiiroja, L., Gadbois, S., & Stewart, S.H. (2025). A critical analysis of service dogs in the context of canine-assisted interventions for PTSD; pages 535-566. Chapter in “The Palgrave Handbook of Human-Animal Interactions in the Global Context of Climate Change, Disasters, and Other Crises”. Eds: Haorui Wu, Kyle Breen, and Sarah DeYoung. DOI : 10.1007/978-3-032-00313-3 / 978-3-032-00312-6

A Critical Analysis of Service Dogs Within Canine-Assisted Interventions for PTSD Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an often-debilitating and chronic disorder that can develop following exposure to a trauma like a natural or man-made disaster (e.g., hurricane, airplane crash). About 60.7% of men and 51.2% of women in the US general...

The latest (and last -- for now -- from former PhD student Laura Kiiroja):
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2025.1658857/full

(don't mind the pic... [!?])

Frontiers | PTSD assistance dogs: concerns for animal well-being, rights, and justice PTSD assistance dogs are service dogs trained to assist individuals living with PTSD. A growing body of research links the use of PTSD assistance dogs with s...

I know there are a few Dalhousie students here; this is for you.
So the lab is resurrecting from its "winter" (let's call it the pandemic and post-pandemic period), with a super busy two-years ahead, a completely new staffing (with a few visitors from the past), new hires (as research assistants, yes, plural), new dogs, and a great need for volunteers. As some of you know, we often have every single slots of a day filled with dogs, including evenings and weekends. We need volunteers with CCAC training to assist in dog sitting, dog walking and dog handling. The following page gives the basic information to get your "lab animal" certification: https://simon.gadbois.org/volunteering.html
Note: since there will be field work with other species (although not necessarily with the wildlife conservation canines), some of you may want to request the "wildlife" module if you ever want to accompany me and the field students on outings.
This will be copied to our other FB presences, the Teams group (Dal Canines) and WhatsApp for the regulars.

Volunteering Look at our research page and see what may interest you, then, contact Dr Simon Gadbois. If you are planning to work with the dogs, you must be comfortable with dogs and dog handling. If you are planning to do field work (with or without the sniffer dogs), you must be comfortable with reptiles (turt...

The latest, congrats to Laura (Interdisciplinary PhD student in my lab)!

Their digest for the media: https://www.frontiersin.org/news/2024/03/28/allergy-dogs-ptsd-breath

The original paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/falgy.2024.1352840/full

And then, things kept getting better. Just as the paper was officially published, we heard that morning that we (Gadbois, Budge, Stewart) got funded for an other two years on this research program. Now going to hunt for the VOC's: Joining the team, from Dal engineering is chemist Dr. Sue Budge (https://www.dal.ca/faculty/engineering/peas/faculty-staff/our-faculty/suzanne-budge.html). Dr. Sherry Stewart (https://medicine.dal.ca/departments/department-sites/psychiatry/our-people/faculty/sherry-stewart.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_Stewart) from Psychology/Neuroscience and Psychiatry is obviously still on board. This new chapter is starting as early as April!

Dogs trained to detect trauma stress by smelling humans’ breath A pilot study shows that dogs can be taught to recognize the scent of trauma reactions on the breath, which could make PTSD assistance dogs more effective.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-26991-5?fbclid=IwAR3OcXRAcABYdiWxXLIRQjazLkc4WmDhbO0HkrFfSWK8CdZ6J0IkfszHzb4

Breed differences in social cognition, inhibitory control, and spatial problem-solving ability in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris) - Scientific Reports The extraordinary genetic and behavioural diversity of dog breeds provides a unique opportunity for investigating the heritability of cognitive traits, such as problem-solving ability, social cognition, inhibitory control, and memory. Previous studies have mainly investigated cognitive differences b...