The Importance Of Letting Your Dog Sniff Things On Walks
As a busy pup parent, I find the most frustrating part of walking my dog is having to stop at every tree and fire hydrant so she can take a sniff. Now, I’ll admit that I tend to pull her away almost immediately. At least, I did until I realized how important it is to allow your canine companion to take in as many smells as they would like while out on an adventure.
I think part of my problem is my sense of smell is terrible compared to my dog’s, which is true for all humans. According to the Continental Kennel Club, “compared to the puny five million olfactory receptors in a human nose, our dogs have between 125–300 hundred million.”
Photo by leonides ruvalcabar on Unsplash
Southern Living also noted that your dog’s keen sense of smell is one of the ways they get vital information from their surroundings.
“Dogs are living in a totally different world than we are, filled with much, much more information than we can possibly process about smell. That’s the way they parse information,” said Dr. Stanley Coren, author of How Dogs Think: Understanding the Canine Mind.
Not only that, but it helps your dog feel more stimulated, which is very helpful if you have a pup who is on the more energetic side.
“The effort it takes to sort and identify individual elements of an odor requires a lot of work. It’s a little like us trying to solve a tough logic problem—the required mental energy is tiring,” reported the Continental Kennel Club.
My dog constantly acts like she just drank 12 Red Bulls, so I think I will be letting her sniff to her heart’s content from now on. Hopefully, this will help her chill out just a little.