Dog Sense of Smell
Dog Defense Instinct

We can try to get an idea about the way our dog feels and thinks, but there is something that we never reach and that is to begin to imagine the parallel universe of smells.

The truffle and snout or the dog are designed to get the most quantity of smell particles and efficiently interpret its chemical messages. The humans can recognize a certain number of smells and almost everyone has been able to experiment how they can make us remember a past circumstance with incredible intensity. However, all this experience is meaningless compared to with the value of the dog's sense of smell. For them, the smells are like books and they extract an amount of information that we can't even imagine.

The sense of smell is still important for the company dogs because it still provides them lots of information about their environment, their food and their possible sexual partners.

OLFATIVE SIGNS: The dogs dedicate a great part of their time smelling not only other dogs, real olfative data banks, but also the air, a real mailbox from which they get, and deposit, messages that are un-doubtfully received no matter the distance. The olfative messages that the female in heat emits for example, are transmitted by air for many kilometers.

Anti-Bark Dog Collars

The dogs leave olfative messages to the other dogs, specially through the urine and the excrement. To assure a better diffusion of these messages the heated female dogs and the rutted male dog try to leave them on an elevated position by raising their paw and urinating on a vertical surface or even defecating on top of an elevated object.

SMELL EXPERTS: There are breeds and breed families with a better developed sense of smell than others, The Bloodhound and the Basset for example, live in a world formed by smells, in them the sense of smell is extremely important and the sense of hearing and sight don't have a real importance. This is because these breeds were bred as working dogs for their keenness of smell and used to follow the trace of lost animals and even people.

Even though the man hasn't an idea of the huge amount of information a dog can get by using its snout, he has recognized and taken advantage of the dog's miraculous sense of smell throughout History.  Dogs are a regular tool man uses to detect many things, from drugs to the dry decay.  They can find, from underground hidden truffles to buried people due to earthquakes or any other natural disaster. The dog's great sense of smell can actually save human lives. Some dogs have been trained to even detect through this sense early symptoms of cancer, explosives or antipersonnel mines.

ALWAYS ALERT: One of the first functions developed by the dog was protecting the man. In their natural environment dogs warn the pack by barking when they detect a strange dog or when a predator is getting close to their territory. Many company dogs bark when visitors or strangers approach the door or ring the bell, trying to let their masters know they should protect the house immediately.

In theory, dogs should only limit itself to let us know that intruders are coming into the large cedar dog house. We, as leaders of the pack, are supposed to be the only ones capable to decide if we let an intruder get into our territory or not. That is why some dogs, specially if they belong to a guardian breed, may think that it is their responsibility to keep their master's house safe from intruders and even get to the point of hurting anyone that doesn't look familiar to the dog or someone that doesn't seem as a reliable person, even when this person may be well received by the owner, or simply seems to be looking around the garden (this is the reason why dogs usually dislike mailmen so much).

When a dog barks and attacks people or other dogs outside the house, it is usually believed that it does it to protect the owner. However, this is not the real reason. Fear is usually the reason for this conduct. Dogs have learnt to protect themselves by looking aggressive in order to frighten away people or other dogs with dog toys. So, they may be just trying to protect themselves and not their masters or their territory.