Do dogs grow out of sniffing?

Sniffing is a natural behavior for dogs. It's how they explore their environment, learn about other animals, and even find food. If you want to improve the overall welfare of your dog it is important to allow them plenty of time to sniff on walks when they desire. Be patient: It may take some time for your dog to get used to sniffing on walks. Sniffing is a great way to mentally enrich and stimulate your dog and encourage natural species specific behavior. This can help to keep them engaged and one study indicated that these positive emotional state of sniffing lead to a more optimistic outlook.

As humans our primary sense is our sight, but for our dogs, smell is their primary sense. They learn most about their environments through sniffing and smell. Processing all that information is pretty tiring for a dog and especially for young dogs and puppies. Allowing your dogs to have a good sniffy walk is a great form of mental, as well as physical, exercise. Just like you prioritize walking your dog, you should also make sniffing a regular activity. Allowing your dog to have a regular outlet for sniffing will put a stop to those less desirable and/or embarrassing moments. Sniffing is a great stress reliever. When dogs sniff their heart rate goes down.

As most dogs age, they become increasingly motivated to sniff, irrespective of whether or not that's what they wanted to do before. Some dogs, especially as they age, prefer to plod slowly and investigate the scents around them. If your dog is also suffering cognitive decline or loss of sight or hearing, a slow walk with plenty of sniffing time is needed to keep them mentally stimulated. Older dogs don't need to be marching for the whole 10 minutes of a walk. If you have 10 minutes and they go 10 metres but spend nine and a half minutes sniffing a lamp post, for that dog that is probably so much better than you trying to drag it around a circular walk around the block. I think it's a massively important part of their quality of life, being able to sniff. You see so many dogs being yanked because the owner thinks either the walk is for the dog and it needs to move, or because they are so fed up of the sniffing - but embracing the 'sniffari' is really important.