Learn Italian: È un cane.

In Italian, you don't usually need to use subject pronouns like "it". The verb È already includes the meaning "he is", "she is", or "it is". You can just start the sentence right with the verb.

The word cane ends in -e. How do we know if it's masculine or feminine?

Italian nouns ending in -e can be either masculine or feminine, so you just have to learn their gender as you go. cane is masculine. Because of this, it uses the masculine article un ("a"). If we wanted to say "the dog" using the new definite articles from this lesson, it would be il cane.