22/08/2025
👃🏻Why do dogs love sniffing so much?👃🏻
Dog have more than 100 million scent receptors, compared to a human who has around 5 or 6 million so there is no doubt that a dogs sense of smell is a superpower for our canine companions.
A dogs’ primary sense is their sense of smell, and they sniff to find out more about their surroundings. When a dog stops and sniffs, they are connecting with and understanding their environment.
Dogs can gather so much information from sniffing it is astounding – they can tell the age, s*x and health of other dogs who were there before them just by smelling scent marked areas.
Dogs can also amazingly detect scents up to 40ft underground, and from over a mile away in open water. One amazing retriever worked with marine biologists to sniff out whale poo in the ocean! He would indicate which direction the boat needed to go by pointing with his nose, and then point downwards to the specific area where whale poo was located. The scientists could then collect samples for testing.
The portion of a dog’s brain that detects the smells (the olfactory cortex) is 40 times larger than the average human’s!
Dogs have an additional scent organ to humans called the Jacobson’s organ which is also found in other animals such as cats, snakes and horses. This organ has special scent receptors that detect pheromones (chemical messages that influence the behaviour of other animals of the same species). Thanks to all their extra scent receptors, a dog’s nose can pick up scents far beyond our reach. For example, when humans smell something cooking, we smell the complete dish, whereas dogs can detect each individual ingredient of the meal.
Also sniffing increases your dog’s respiration rate, and they use lots of mental energy processing the information they’re picking up. With sniffing providing so much mental stimulation for dogs they find it tiring, which is why games such as "find it" are good. Studies have also shown that it produces feel-good hormones and even increases optimism in dogs. So when a dog stops and sniffs, it is literally making them happy.
Letting a dog choose when to stop and sniff on a walk can be a great confidence builder, and has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety too.
A sniffari walk adds valuable mental stimulation to complement your dog’s physical exercise, and lots of sniff stops can be nice opportunities for humans to pause and take in our surroundings too. So take a walk and let your dog stop and sniff as much as they please.
Top tips for a sniffari walk
🐾Let your dog follow their nose; by allowing your dog to take the lead by letting them choose when and where to stop and sniff is a wonderful way to add more choice to your dog’s day.
🐾Keep your dog busy and engaged with sniffy games; hide treats or part of your dog’s daily portion of kibble in the environment. You can then ask your dog to ‘find it’ and watch them have fun using their nose to locate the hidden snack.
🐾Mix things up and introduce your dog to new and different environments; different habitats host different and sometimes new smells, and exploring somewhere new can be very enriching and enjoyable for dogs. Just remember to keep paws on paths where asked and follow requests on signage especially on private land
