YOUR DOG'S SENSE OF SMELL

Sadly, because we humans depend far more on sight and sound to communicate and understand what is happening around us, we have very little understanding of how important a dog's sense of smell is to their everyday life and mental well being. This is because our sense of smell is very poor in comparison to that of a dog - humans have approximately 5 million scent receptors in their nose while the average dog has over 200 million, and working dogs such as scent hounds can have between 230 to 300 million. Another way of describing how amazing a dog's sense of smell is to use the analogy of a dog being able to find a single grain of sand on a 10m square patch of a beach!

SCENT IS THE MOST HIGHLY DEVELOPED OF ALL A DOG'S SENSES

HOW A DOG'S NOSE WORKS
When a dog takes a short deep sniff (rather than normal breathing) moisture on the surface of a dog's nose helps to capture scent molecules in the air and dissolve them. These molecules then come into contact with the olfactory membranes deep inside the dog's nose which send nerve impulses to the olfactory centre of the brain (which is forty times larger in ratio to the olfactory centre of a human brain). These nasal membranes cover the nose's wafer-thin turbinate bones and have convoluted folds to ensure that the minutest amount of scent can be captured within them and assessed accurately.