You all already know how much I love sniffaris, those walks where dogs are just allowed to sniff and explore, stopping at every bush, tree, lamp post, and rock to check their pee mail. The olfactory area of their brains is roughly forty times larger than ours, allowing them to dissect and categorize every smell they encounter, much like us keeping up with a complicated family group chat on our phone. Even if you walk the same route every day, the smells change; they change with who else has visited that path, but the smells also change with the weather and the season. And while, yes, dogs are rapid sniffers, able to sniff about five times per second, and even smell with each nostril separately, it still takes time to stop and evaluate every one of those scents they encounter on their walks, so please, don't rush them. A dog has roughly 300 million scent receptors in their nose, while humans have only about six million. Hurrying a dog along while they are sniffing is depriving them of important information about their environment. But you already knew all of this already, right? Here's the part you may not know. There are sniffari benefits to be had in other places besides those walks.
In 2019, two canine cognition researchers, Charlotte Duranton and Alexandra Horowitz, published their findings in "Applied Animal Behaviour Science." The paper titled, "Let me sniff! Nose-work induces positive judgment bias in pet dogs," found that dogs who engage in regular sniffing or nose-work games had a statistically significant increase in a marker they referred to as optimism. Here's a quick summary of the study: Twenty adult dogs over the age of one year of various breeds were divided into two groups, one doing scent detection training and the other practicing standard heel work while walking. The researchers used what is called a cognitive bias test, what they referred to as an "optimism test" in order to quantify how quickly the dogs approached "an ambiguous, empty bowl in a middle location" once they'd learned that one location always had a piece of chicken in a bowl while another never had anything in the bowl. Faster movements indicated the dogs had more positive judgment bias, that is were more optimistic. They concluded that the dogs who had participated in scent work displayed a higher judgment bias/were more optimistic, approaching search targets faster, indicating that they had an "improved emotional state and heightened initiative independent of the physical exercise."
If you want to read the full research paper yourself, you'll find it here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159118304325?via%3Dihub
So what does this all mean for your dogs? It means that allowing them to sniff, a natural, normal dog behavior, will result in dogs who generally behave in ways that show their ability to actively make choices on their own, thus enhancing their overall welfare and well-being. Providing dogs with more exploratory, foraging time results in them being less anxious and more optimistic overall. So, it's not just using their noses that's important. It's that they have a choice in how to spend their time using their noses. Scent based games like food puzzles, snuffle mats, and traditional nose-work classes and activities allow dogs to use their natural foraging behaviors and make independent choices on how to solve the problems presented thus improving their overall mental health and well-being. What this means is that sniffing on their walks is great, but you can increase their overall optimism by creating other opportunities to use their noses. So, break out those food puzzles, sign up for the nose-work classes, and get to work! Your dog will thank you as soon as they're done checking that pee mail.
As always, if you have questions about your pet's behavior, you know where to find me.
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