Understanding Your Dog’s Senses
We may know the basics of what our dogs can do with their taste, smell, hearing, sight and touch, but their is much more that will blow your mind!
Taste
Taste is the one sense that dog’s lack excellence in. Dogs actually have far fewer taste buds than humans and don’t have a well-developed sense of taste. When your dog is eating, a unique olfactory organ inside his mouth actually allows him to “taste” the air around the food, not the food itself, before it’s gulped down. Since dogs don’t eat food for the taste, they will often eat anything that resembles something edible.
Smell
Depending on the breed, a dog’s sense of smell can be 10,000 to 100,000 times stronger than that of a human. Dog’s sense of smell is truly incredible. Where a human might enter a home and smell lasagna in the oven, a dog would enter that same home and individually identify every ingredient.
It makes sense why our dogs must stop every five feet on a walk to smell something. While it might appear they are sniffing a patch of grass, but he is gathering information about who or what was there before.
Dogs love games that let them use their noses. You can stimulate your dog’s sense of smell with treat puzzles and hiding treats or toys around the yard or house! They are naturally good at smelling, and it’s a confidence booster when they succeed.
Hearing
Like their sense of smell, dogs’ sense of hearing is far more advanced than ours. Not only do they hear much louder and more clearly than we do, they’re able to discern subtle differences in sound that humans could never hear. For example, if everyone in your entire city drove the exact same car, your dog would still know whether or not it was you pulling into the driveway.
Their incredible sense of hearing is because of their unique shape and structure of their ears. That’s why caring for your dog’s ears is so important. Your dog’s ears should be inspected often for redness or irritation, dirt or debris, or waxy buildup. Especially dogs with floppy or long, droopy ears that are prone to infection.
Sight
Many people think dogs have poor eyesight compared to humans, but dog’s actually see differently in a way that fits their species. Dogs are especially good at seeing at dawn or dusk and seeing much better in the dark than humans. Unlike humans who see in full color, a dog is only able to see the world around them in shades of blue, yellow, and gray.
Have you ever noticed that your dog will lose a tossed ball in the grass, even if it appears that they’re looking right at it? To help your pup out, choose toys with highly contrasting colors.
Touch
A dog’s sense of touch is the very first sense to develop. A dog’s entire body is covered in touch-sensitive nerve endings that “feel” the world around him, the wind blowing or a fly landing on his back, for example. And, dog’s have touch-sensitive hairs called vibrissae – better known as their whiskers.
What else do you know about dog’s senses? We would love to hear from you!