Dogs will usually sniff the ground before choosing a spot to go to the bathroom because they are reading the messages that were previously left by others and, then, they are choosing an appropriate spot to mark their own territory.
It is no secret that a dog's signature way to mark its territory is by urinating. If you have recently moved, your dog may be smelling urine stains from dogs who used to live there. Even if you can't smell any pet urine in the carpet, the sensitive nose of a dog can pick up past smells of pee.
Dogs leave their scents in the urine deposits that they leave on pavements, kerbs, trees and lampposts. By sniffing these, your dog is gaining information on who is in their neighbourhood; the gender of the dog, its reproductive status, general status in life and exactly when it passed by.
Dogs will shove their noses into a human's crotch, owner or guest, with no hesitation. While the invasive sniffing can be embarrassing, especially if your dog does it to a visitor, it's their way of saying hello and learning about someone.
A dog's sense of smell is so sensitive that it is able to smell through different materials, and that includes water. For this reason, dogs are very useful when it comes to investigations such as locating a missing body.
Unlike humans, who experience the world visually, dogs detect changes to their environment, including who has been there and for how long, through their impeccable sense of smell.
"Smell is just information for them, the same way that we open our eyes and we see the world." Notably, dogs are unlikely to classify scents as "good" or "bad." In the same way you don't look at feces and shudder, a dog is unlikely to sniff feces and immediately back off.
It turns out that dogs can actually pick up on the pheromone chemical that your sweaty private parts produce, and pheromones hold a lot of information about ourselves: our diets, moods, health, even whether a female is pregnant or menstruating.
Just like their human pals, dogs are likely to choose a favorite person based on a number of factors. Some of these include the person's demeanor, interactions with the dog, and how well the person helps meet their basic needs.
It turns out that both cats and dogs are able to detect menstruation by odor and hormonal levels. Of course, they don't actually have any scientific concept of what's happening in your uterus, but they do know that something is going on.
Although the bases of this ability remain to be established, our observations suggest that dogs can categorize human gender in both visual/olfactory and auditory modalities.
Let Them Sniff!
Unless the client specifies otherwise, we at Paws At Home allow dogs to sniff to their hearts content! Now of course we do not let a dog sniff (let alone eat) anything gross or dangerous, such as poop, mushrooms, dead critters, food, trash, and so on. But yes, they can absolutely sniff pee!
Use a Blacklight to Find Urine Stains! If there are no smells or your dog isn't repeatedly marking one area, it doesn't mean you're in the clear. Rather than putting your nose to the floor trying to discover where that smell is coming from, you can find dried urine stains on carpet and furniture with a blacklight.
As a dog owner, you know that dogs who urinate in the house will return to the same spots over and over again due to the smell. Their urine contains an enzyme that powerfully marks the spot. Simply cleaning the area won't get rid of this special scent.
With a thorough cleaning, the smell of pet pee may dissipate within about 15 minutes, although most cases take several days to stop smelling after cleaning up the stain. If you leave a urine spot untreated, it may take up to five years to stop smelling on its own.
However, canines can figure out the gist of what we want and gather a lot of information from our body language, tone of voice, the rhythm of our voice and intonation of speech. What your dog hears when you talk to him is his favorite melody – your voice.
Bonk told The Dodo. “If a dog is taken care of by a female, they're more likely to prefer females, [whereas] if they're primarily taken care of by a male, they may prefer males.” And in some cases, these associations can be negative.
If your dog follows you into the bathroom, it's likely a result of their animal instinct and pack mentality. Canines who do this are referred to as “Velcro dogs,” due to their desire to be attached to your side. They may follow you around, even to the bathroom, to protect a part of their pack.
The Root of the Behavior
Licking is a natural part of the male dog's behavior. Female dogs will lick their vulva quite vigorously sometimes as they derive pleasure from this activity. Licking the vulva from a sexual perspective could be the sign that your female is coming into heat.
Although we associate fastidious grooming with cats, dogs lick themselves to stay clean too. They will lick their paws, legs, and body, so why not their crotch? They need to keep their genitals clean from dirt and discharge, and they don't use toilet paper for their anal region, so their tongue is the way to do it.
Is licking private parts ever acceptable? In the dog world, a moderate degree of licking is part of normal grooming behavior. For example, a male or female dog may lick the genital area after urinating as a means of cleaning the area. When this is the case, licking is only related to elimination and is not persistent.
How far dogs can smell depends on many things, such as the wind and the type of scent. Under perfect conditions, they have been reported to smell objects or people as far as 20km away.
Canine Anal Sacs
All canine companions have two small scent sacs on their bottoms that act as marking glands, which is why dogs smell rear ends when introduced. If these sacs become impacted, it can cause the dog pain, not to mention result in a extremely smelly secretion that remains on the fur.
"If you were to look at a dog's olfactory lobe compared to a human, it's huge in a dog. It's because their sense of smell is so highly developed. Problems in that area of the brain can cause altered smell. So, tumors of the brain, strokes, head trauma, injury can all impact the sense of smell."
Given that dogs can read the cues, then yes, they most likely know when we are going on a holiday. Saying goodbye to your pet will always be a little heartbreaking for both parties (especially when they respond to you with a whimper!) but there are things that we can do to make it a little easier for your pooch.