Understanding Dog Behaviour

Understanding a Dog’s Senses

A big part of understanding your dog is understand their senses and accepting that there are indeed different from human beings.

Human communicate: Hearing → Seeing → Smelling; while,

Dog communicate: Smelling → Seeing → Hearing.

Above all, dogs can feel the energy (emotions) of the other things around them where human cannot. This has make dogs special to have such universal sense. However, each type of dog breeds has its specialty in term of senses.

Let us take a look at each of their senses:

THE NOSE

A dog interprets the world predominantly by smell, whereas human interprets it by sight. In fact, a dog interprets as much information as human do by just smelling an object or animal, not by staring at it.

While a dog’s brain is only one-tenth the size of a human brain, the part that controls smell is 40 times larger than in humans. A dog’s sense of smell is about 1,000 to 10,000,000 times more sensitive than a human, depending on the breed.

Table: Scent-Detecting Cells in People and Dog Breeds

Species	Number of Scent Receptors
Humans	5 million
Dachshund	125 million
Fox Terrier	147 million
Beagle	225 million
German Shepherd	225 million
Bloodhound	300 million

Source: (Understanding a Dog's Sense of Smell, 2011).

Ever wonder why your dog’s nose is wet? The mucus on a dog’s nose actually helps them smell by capturing scent particles. When a dog nose is dry they may lick it to aid then in scent.

A dog’s nose has a pattern of ridges and dimples that, in combination with the outline of its nostril openings, make up a nose print believed to be as individual and unique as a human being’s fingerprints. Companies even register nose-prints as a way of identifying and helping to locate lost or stolen dogs.

It is interesting that:-

If you want to take a nose print from your dog just for fun, it’s as easy as an ABC as follow:
-  Wipe your dog's nose with a towel to dry its surface.
-  Pour food coloring onto a paper towel and lightly coat your pet's nose with it. 
- Then hold a pad of paper to the dog nose, making sure to let the pad's sides curve around to pick up impressions from the sides of the nose, as well. 
-  You may have to try a couple of times until you get the right amount of food coloring and the right amount of pressure to produce a print in which the little patterns on the nose are clear.

  Gentle reminder:

The food coloring is nontoxic and is easily removed.

Never use ink / paint, or you may have to explain to your friends why your dog has a pink nose. 

Source: (Understanding a Dog's Sense of Smell, 2011).

- Brie