Searching: Mental Stimulation Through Smell

This activity allows pets, who live in cities, not to lose their most precious instinct and sense. In addition, it will strengthen the bond with its owner and is a way to preserve his health, as he will exercise physically and, together, will be psychologically motivated.

The sense of smell, which dogs used before to survive, can atrophy  in those pets who lead a pleasant home life. Searching is a good method to keep our pet  stimulated  through creative games.

The great explorers of the animal world

Humans have about six million scent receptors. Dogs own about 300 million. Not only do they outgrow our atrophied sense of smell, but the part of their brains in charge of analyzing odors is 40 times larger.

Thanks to this  innate ability to track ,  dogs can help us find everything from small hidden treasures, such as fruits, to  items or objects  considered lost. Law enforcement agencies also make the most of these animals to  detect drugs and locate missing persons.

The  stimulation games  through “searching” that we will mention next,  can help us to keep in our dog certain abilities  that can be useful for both the animal and the owner.

Searching, a continuous scent-based game

Searching is a method of stimulation based on the use of  prizes or clothing with which the animal is familiar,  to create a fictional situation in which the animal acts as a tracker or predator, and the  hidden object or prize becomes the stuck.

Next, we will see how we can propose to our dog  certain “searching” challenges, of greater or lesser difficulty,  to keep his sense of smell active.

• The first one, simply called “ Find the Food,”  will serve as a contact. Simply  hide prizes throughout the house and wait for the dog to find them. When discovering where they are, the animal will feel more encouraged to  track and look for  new possible prizes. Keep increasing the difficulty of hiding places and do this while he is away from home, to make it difficult.
• The  new animal game  is based on the dog’s predatory instinct. The owner uses the scent of a new animal, for example a cat or a different dog, and introduces it into the dog’s environment to see how it reacts and whether it subsequently recognizes the animal. Impregnate the exteriors of the house, the garden and introduce new variations.
• Hide and seek makes you the prize the dog has to look for. Try hiding under the bed, in the pantry or in the closet. Your pet won’t take long to miss you and will start looking for you, and will be guided by your nose.
• In the wild, dogs have to track their prey directly to find food. Pets only need to go to the kitchen to access the food bowl. To make everything a little more interesting, keep  changing your food location : start moving it around and, finally, make your pet have to leave the house to eat.

• The Bread Crumb Game  . Dogs are not just interested in finding food or knowing where their master is. As natural trackers,  they will be attracted to new scents  in their environment. Take, for example,   lavender essential oils or some other aromatic herb, and try impregnating a toy. When the dog finds you, reward him. Once he is used to the new smell, try to hide the toy in a more difficult place and keep  putting pieces of paper impregnated with perfume as clues. When he understands the system and finds the object, give him a prize or give him a caress.

There are many ways to keep our dog entertained by olfactory stimuli. With games, the  bond between the animal and its owner will become stronger  and it will not lose a quality as appreciated as its sense of smell. Of course, remember that  the key to any stimulation or training is positive reinforcement.