Is sniffing therapeutic for dogs?
Jeromy Schowalter
2025-07-20 15:42:51
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Sniffing is a great way to provide mental stimulation for dogs. When you let your dog pause and sniff, you’re actually improving their mental health. Mental stimulation for dogs plays an important role in keeping them happy, sharp and well-behaved. By engaging your dog’s mind, you help them create new neural pathways and stay mentally active. One of the best mental stimulation activities for dogs is allowing them to use their extraordinary sense of smell. Dogs have up to 300 million scent receptors, depending on the breed, which makes sniffing an essential activity. This form of stimulation activates their brain’s "seeking system," similar to how we seek updates on social media and news sites. By encouraging sniffing walks for dogs, you’re providing them with mental enrichment that helps them process the world.
Jay Lakin
2025-07-15 21:32:52
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Sniffing is a great stress reliever. When dogs sniff their heart rate goes down. This means it’s naturally calming and soothing and helps relieve any stress or anxiety that your dog may be feeling. Smell is their primary sense, they learn most about their environments through sniffing and smell. The way something smells gives a dog more information than how something looks, sounds or tastes. Sniffing allows your dog to collect all sorts of information about the other dogs in the area such as their sex, age and size. Allowing your dogs to have a good sniffy walk is a great form of mental, as well as physical, exercise. Processing all that information is pretty tiring for a dog and especially for young dogs and puppies.
Adele Cremin
2025-07-08 20:41:21
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It’s enjoyable, in the same way that we look around us and take pleasure in that, our dogs sniff and take equal joy in that. Sniffing has so many benefits for your dog. For active dogs, or for dogs who start their walks totally uncontrollable and either pulling on the lead in their excitement, or else whizzing around all over the place, time spent sniffing can take the edge off their unfocussed energy. For worried reactive dogs, sniffing can help them feel more secure - as they have spent time working out what is out there and whether it needs to be worried about or whether, far more likely, it is safe. Perhaps more importantly, for all dogs a chance to sniff fulfils a major part of their sensory needs - as much as physical and mental exercise does and as much as play does. Sniffing makes them happy and gives them an outlet for their hard-wired natural behaviours.
Annamae Sawayn
2025-06-27 00:50:38
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Sniffing is an important part of a dog’s life and has many benefits. Sniffing can help dogs detect illness or danger. It has been discovered that dogs are able to detect and provide support for medical conditions in their owners. Sniffing is calming for dogs. It can provide your dog with psychological comfort and security. When they are stressed or anxious, sniffing can help them relax and feel better. Dogs use their sense of smell to learn about the people around them and to feel more relaxed in their presence. Dogs also use sniffing as a displacement behavior; meaning if they sense conflict with a person or another dog or other animal, they will often stop to sniff the ground, or sniff their own body to stall for time and communicate calmness and positive intent. Lastly, dogs who sniff more tend to be healthier and happier. According to a new study, dogs that spend more time smelling things are more content and have better overall health.
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