05 October 2010

Dognose

Mom noticed it first. We had a Labrador Retriever and he would not be satisfied until he had checked you out, and he was pretty insistent about it...
He wanted to smell your breath. He'd come up close to you and stick his nose in your direction. We learned to exhale toward him and watch him inhale and sample the smells there, and then he'd walk away satisfied.
It's been my experience that most dogs will do this...
When I come home from work and sit in my recliner, Lucy and Yogi will come stand on my chest and look at me in expectation until I gently exhale in their direction. Then, like they've completed an important task, they'll relax and curl up in my lap.

Experts say most dog's noses are 10,000 times as sensitive as ours, and bloodhounds even more sensitive than that. We know dogs can sniff out cancer, can sense an oncoming seizure in someone with epilepsy, can smell a cadaver under 30 feet of water.

I tried to do a little research on the subject and found this comment. That answer really tells me nothing, but it verifies that others are experiencing what Mom first noticed so many years ago.

I want someone to learn to speak with dogs so they can tell us how much they learn by smelling our smells.
I bet it'd be spooky what they could tell us.

4 comments:

CJ said...

Got no answer as to why they do it - I like the first answer on the link you've provided.

Here's another interesting one along the same lines:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0112_060112_dog_cancer.html

All I can tell you is that if my dog started paying extra interest in my breath or in a spot on my arm - smelling it, nipping at it - I'd get it checked in a hurry.

cjh

Bloviating Zeppelin said...

On the other hand, I've given nothing to dogs. My wife extends everything to dogs. She has 5 of them on her property. She excuses everything they do. I have reigned them in via physical and non-verbal assignations. Some of them bit me. I either eliminated them or killed them or dominated them. One dog that bites me is dead. No matter what my wife may wish.

BZ

Greybeard said...

I don't know quite what to say, BZ.
I've nearly always had a dog in my life, and they've all made my life richer and fuller. They do require work to housebreak and otherwise train so they add, rather than subtract from our quality of life.
Those that don't take the time for that training should not take on the responsibility.

Timothy Frazier said...

The dog lives by it's nose they way we live by our eyes. I've always had success in introducing new dogs to each other by swapping thier collars before the meeting. They smell something familiar on the other dog and assume all is as it should be.

Their world is colored with scent instead of light.

Funny how we both wrote posts on our blogs about dogs at nearly the same time without knowing it.