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Let’s face it, dog walking is a lot more enjoyable when the sun is shining. As much as we love our pooches, trudging through the rain and mud in the darkness isn’t always the highlight of our winter days. However, when days start to become lighter and longer (around March time), we often feel a lot more inspired to get out into the fresh air to keep our pups - and ourselves - fit and healthy. 

This is obviously great news for our dogs! Instead of dragging them along in the rain and discouraging any sniffing breaks, spring and summer walks are understandably a bit more relaxed and this allows dogs to do something they absolutely love – stop and sniff! 

Wake up and smell the facts!

Although it varies from breed to breed, a dog’s sense of smell is around 10,000 - 100,000 times stronger than ours. Their noses contain up to 300 million smell receptors, compared to a meagre 6 million in a human nose, and at times, a dog can smell up to 20km away! Basically, sniffing is a dog’s superpower. 

It’s no surprise then that dogs can have many hugely important jobs that involve their sniffing skills to help out their human friends. Thanks to their nifty noses, they can detect drugs, explosives, other humans, and even cancer cells, which are all extremely useful for the police, at airports, in prisons, in hospitals and many other situations. 

The joy of people watching sniffing

Dogs use their sense of smell as a means to collect information about the world around them. It allows them to identify the who, what and where of every situation they’re in. We tend to rely on eyesight to do this for us, but for dogs this very much driven by what they can smell.  

Think of the concept of people watching. We can enjoy just sitting outside a café watching the world go by, observing what’s going on around us. Yes, we use other senses too – for sounds and smells – but our sight is what tends delivers us the most information. For dogs, sniffing the air, a tree, the ground, an object, another dog, a person, is their way of ‘people watching’ and provides them with everything they need to know, as well as providing great pleasure. 

Studies show that sniffing makes dogs feel brighter, happier and calmer. Allowing dogs to sniff at their leisure is allowing them to exhibit completely normal and natural behaviour, which of course boosts their mood and mental health. It’s also a great way for them to use up energy and mentally stimulate themselves, due to all of the identification and processing that happens with the different scents they pick up. 

Playing scent games

A fantastic way of giving your dog even more opportunity to sniff around, is to play scent-based games with them. Not only does this provide the gratitude of sniffing and finding, but it’s a great way to mentally exercise your dog. 

A simple idea is to allow your dog to sniff an object to learn its scent (a tennis ball, a treat, a cloth etc.) and then hide it somewhere in the room or space that you and your dog are both in (without them seeing!). Then ‘release’ your dog with a command word (‘find’, ‘fetch’, ‘go’) and allow them to sniff out the object. Of course, they’ll deserve a nice tasty treat after! (Leo & Wolf treats are perfect for this type of game / training).  

Hiding treats under a line of cups, ‘pick a hand’ and hide and seek are also great, easy games to play with your dog to let them exercise their sense of smell, their mind, and strengthen your bond with them. 

We’d love to see you and your dog playing scent games! Be sure to tag us on social media @nutrimentraw