Dogs of C-Kennel by Mick & Mason Mastroianni for April 25, 2023

One thing that bugs me a lot is to see someone walking a dog that stops to smell something but the impatient owner tugs the dog along before it is done. Kinda like stopping to read a sign in a store window only to have your companion grab your neck and yank you away abruptly without warning before you are done...

With noses, dogs rule. The walk is more for their benefit typically, so let them finish sniffing. Who knows what they are finding out? ..

FACT: Dogs have a special organ that gives them a “second” sense of smell. A dog’s vomeronasal organ helps them detect pheromones, which are chemicals that animals release that affect other members of the same species. This organ plays an important role in reproduction and other aspects of canine physiology and behavior.

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FACT:Dogs smell in 3-D. Dogs can smell separately with each nostril. Just as our eyes compile two slightly different views of the world, and our brain combines them to form a 3-D picture, a dog’s brain uses the different odor profiles from each nostril to determine exactly where smelly objects are located, and possibly more.

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FACT: Dogs can smell the passage of time. Dogs can detect the tiny reductions in the concentrations of odor molecules that occur over short periods of time. This allows tracking dogs to quickly determine which direction a person or animal has gone in by sniffing the ground.

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FACT: Dogs can smell up to 100,000 times better than humans. A dog’s sense of smell is so sensitive that dogs can detect the equivalent of a 1/2 a teaspoon of sugar in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

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If dog noses and human noses were like eyes, we’d be practically blind and could only see blurry blobs in black or white while dogs would have eagle-sharp vision.

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SO who knows what they are “reading” or “seeing” or finding out that we nasal-deficit humans cannot? Whatever it is, let them finish sniffing for their own benefits if you actually love your dog(s). That’s their world.

SNIFF

It really is up to you dogs to explain all this stuff to us clueless humans.

The only time I make my dog move is she trys to eat what is there. I don’t know what it is and could make her sick.

… And roll in…..

My rule, “you can smell it as long as you want to; but, you may NOT roll in it.”

I don’t want my four legged kids to sniff certain things because they have a tendency to lick whatever it is: other dogs poop (they might get sick), mailbox post (polite to neighbors) or Roadkill (might get sick). I entice them to move along using short gentle tugs and praise them. Yip yip yip yip yip

Sniff away, Kenny.

My Great Pyrenees goes with me, on leash, straight to the mailbox (long driveway), but coming back to house has to sniff everything.

Kenny has a winters worth of smells that he has to get caught up on ……. :)

When my Boy (Avatar) would be with me in the woods, it was so funny watching him zip right along and suddenly do a 180 to go check out a smell that he caught zipping by ……. and suddenly he realized that I was way ahead of him and he’d go full speed to catch up, then go by and again catch a smell …… then repeat the routine again ………. great memories …. :)

So many smells, so little time.

Yeah, give him some slack.