Hi, my name is "Dally" the Dalmatian.

I'm famous for my advice on how to stop dog bites before they happen.

My job is to help children, and adults, to learn how to treat all dogs with care, consideration, and respect, as well as to stay safe by making the right choices around all dogs, not just the family pet.

Dogs can bite for many different reasons, so it's really important that we know how to respect our dogs and how to conduct ourselves around dogs, even the family dog.

Some of the reasons a dog can bite are:

• They are scared
• They are protecting their puppies
• They are feeling ill or unwell
• They have not been trained
• They get over excited
• If we disturb them, when they are sleeping, eating, or playing with their toys

SMELL - The sense of smell is very different between dogs and people. The percentage of the dog's brain that is devoted to analyze smells is 40 times larger than that of a human. It's been estimated that dogs can identify smells somewhere between 1,000 to 10,000 times better than humans.

Hearing - Dogs have a great sense of hearing. In fact, it is their second best sense (next to their sense of smell). Not only can they hear sounds that are too quiet for people to hear, but they also can hear sounds that are either too high or too low in pitch for people to hear. A dog’s ability to hear, varies based on a dog’s age and breed. Like people, dogs can start to lose their hearing as they get older and, in some cases, a dog may go completely deaf.

Taste - A dog’s sense of taste is its least developed sense and, just as with humans, taste is closely linked to the sense of smell. The main difference with taste between people and dogs is that people won’t eat something that smells bad, while dogs are the opposite – the smellier the better! People tend to try something before deciding whether or not we like it. Dogs, however, have fewer taste buds than people and are more concerned with smell rather than taste. Dogs frequently gobble down food before they even have time to chew it, or taste it.

Touch - This is the first sense the dog develops. Mothers begin touching their puppies almost immediately after their birth by licking and nuzzling. The dog’s entire body, including its paws, is covered with touch-sensitive nerve endings. The sense of touch is important to a dog because it helps it socialise with its family pack and other dogs too. That's why it’s so important to ppat and stroke your dog.

Sight - A dog’s eye does not have the same things found in the human eye. For example, although a dog can see colours, what they see is a more muted version of what we see. Dogs probably see the world in shades of gren, red and grey. Dogs also have better night vision and side vision than humans, but dogs cannot really tell, as well as humans can, how far away something is. A dog’s ability to see also varies by breed and age too.