27/04/2026
Here’s a PSA on behalf of all dogs.
Stop correcting your dog for sniffing.
Stop it. Please.
How would you like it if I corrected you for looking around a room? Imagine if you raised your head to look around a new place and I popped you or shoved you or said “HEY! PAY ATTENTION TO ME” You’d get pretty upset pretty quickly I’d imagine.
Dogs don’t smell because they are ignoring you or being stubborn. We humans primarily depend on sight, but dogs use smell AND sight to assess their surroundings and communicate. People spend more time interpreting visual data than olfactory information. Dogs are just the opposite.
Dogs devote lots of brain power to interpreting smells. They have more than 100 million sensory receptor sites in the nasal cavity as compared to 6 million in people, and the area of the canine brain devoted to analyzing odors is about 40 times larger than the comparable part of the human brain. In fact, it’s been estimated that dogs can smell anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 times better than people.
Scent gives information. Smelling is normal. Smelling is necessary and natural. Smelling is relaxing. Air scenting is HUGE for recovering reactive dogs. LET YOUR DOG SMELL!
Correcting a dog for sniffing is one of the worst things I watch people do. It’s another example of how controlling we try to be in our dogs lives. If you don’t want your dog to smell, teach him to focus on you instead for PART of the time, and then give other ample opportunities to smell. Walks on a long line on a dirt road or in a field for your dog to zig zag back and forth on to smell is MUCH healthier and more tiring for them as animals than trying to keep them within 6 feet of you on a neighborhood walk.
Please accept that smelling is normal and work WITH your dog on it, rather than just trying to suppress it. Just because that blade of grass or tree isn’t interesting to YOU doesn’t mean your dog deserves a correction. Who cares if you don’t walk the extra block - spend those 5 minutes on that one tree if you need to. Your dog doesn’t complain when you watch YouTube videos of kittens for hours or read the news or binge on Netflix, so let him get his scent binge in to.
Happy smelling pups!
- Helen St. Pierre
