Make your life easier and your dog happier and more fulfilled with smell!

A dog's nose is its main way of interpreting the world around it. Much of a dog's brain is given over to processing smell. We have six million olfactory receptors; dogs have up to 300 million. A dog's sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times as acute as a human's - while we might notice if our coffee has had a teaspoon of sugar added to it, a dog could detect a teaspoon of sugar in a million gallons of water, or two Olympic-sized pools worth!

By contrast, a dog's vision is poor - let's say different - compared to a human. If they were human, you would describe their vision as red-green colour blind. Their vision is somewhat near-sighted and grainy, but they see about 7 times better than humans in the dark - much like a cat.

With smell such an important part of the dog's world, we can use that amazing talent to make our dog's life more fulfilling, and our life easier.

Just like humans, bored dogs get into trouble. They WILL express their need to use their brain, whether you like it or not! The trick is to help them use their 'brain energy' for good, rather than destroying your home!

How? Here are some simple things to do to channel your dog's talent into something fun and fulfilling without taking any more time out of your day:

🐾 Make walks interactive, and in a variety of locations, with bush, rivers, ponds - rather than the dreaded and bleak local oval.
🐾 Play 'hide and seek'. Take a friend to hold your dog. Start easy by going a few meters away and hid behind a tree, then make the game increasingly difficult by going farther.
🐾 Silently change directions while your dog's not paying attention.
🐾 Instead of throwing a ball onto lawn, throw it into long grass or bush. 
🐾 Use feeding time as away to get the nose working. Let the dog see you distribute small amounts of food around the garden, and then release the dog to find its food.

(Source and further reading https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/dogs-sense-of-smell/…)