10/23/2025
I am linking in the comments a post on the importance of scent is for dogs, something I think most of us know, but maybe not how to provide it in large enough or varied enough dosages to meet dogs needs. Dogs need variety of scent experiences, not just the scents they gather on the same leash walk day after day. This post provides lots of ideas for varying dogs' experience of smells, including ideas that can be implemented when walks cannot happen for weather or health reasons.
Scent is important to many species that people keep. In fact, I can't think of a species in which it isn't important. They may not be dogs, but they smell stuff all the time. When we focus on one species, we may miss a broader understanding of what matters to the welfare of various animals and how to provide it. Certainly, we can get ideas about research to explore regarding the experience of other animals we keep and what kinds of enrichment might be helpful to meeting those needs from information available regarding a particular species and do a comparative analysis. If I want to know about the importance of scent for horses or cats, for example, I can do a Google search of that scientific literature and apply the results with my own animals. When researching for a particular species, say domestic cats, don't forget to look at work related to their wild and zoo-kept counterparts. Lots of excellent work on enrichment has occurred in zoos with many species, including large cats.
Scent-enriched environments can and should be provided to horses, rodents, cats, even reptiles. A successful enrichment I provided to snakes in a zoo was moss that worms had been packaged in. The snakes flicked their tongues over it and appeared to use their vomeronasal organs to explore the moss. I'd never seen them so engaged in something added to their environment previously. Then again, not much had been altered in their environments in the past, which was a shame. So much behavior that didn't happen and went unwitnessed!
Image of a dark miniature horse in a barn "smiling," the behavior that developed out of reinforcing his flehman response.
