If only men marked their territory like Jack Russell terriers.

[Virtual_Burlesque]

According to one episode of "Dogs With Jobs" at least one exterminator uses a beagle to find if there are termite infestations in customers’ houses.

If a dog can smell a termite through a plaster wall, they have a right to a few urinary peculiarities.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I've also noticed that nothing smells bad to a dog. Nothing.

It must be great to live in an olfactory world. You can tell when your enemies or friends are around even when you can't see or hear them. You can tell what happened in the past just be sniffing a piece of ground.

Among other things that I wonder about my dog is why he goes so ballistic every time I get close to his leash. I mean, sure it's nice to go outside, but it's not like he's going to get laid or high or anything, so why should he get so fantastically excited? And I mean, he really gets ecstatic.

But if you perceive the world through your nose, then sitting inside smelling the same stuff must be the equivalent of staring at the same blank walls all day. When he goes outside, even if it's just for a ride in the car, he immediately knows what's going on blocks away, can tell who's been by, what they were up to, what little animals crossed the lawn, what weeds are coming into bloom, maybe even what bugs are out.

The air is full of stuff. Not just scents but pollen and mould and off-gasing from the soil and plants, bits of dna and junk. There are male moths who can detect one single molecule of a female moth's sex pheromone drifting by on the air. They'll fly miles following the scent.

When you consider how emotional scents are--how smells can trigger old memories and feelings--it makes you think that dogs must live in a very rich and amazing world.

---dr.M.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

According to one episode of "Dogs With Jobs" at least one exterminator uses a beagle to find if there are termite infestations in customers’ houses.

If a dog can smell a termite through a plaster wall, they have a right to a few urinary peculiarities.

There was a guy on animal planet who's trained a bloodhound to smell out skin cancers before doctors can diagnose them.

---dr.M.

 

[Guest]

When you consider how emotional scents are--how smells can trigger old memories and feelings--it makes you think that dogs must live in a very rich and amazing world.

Mab., have you ever given your dog a madeleine dipped in tea?

Perdita

 

[shereads]

There was a guy on animal planet who's trained a bloodhound to smell out skin cancers before doctors can diagnose them.

---dr.M. [/B]

Dogs can detect an oncoming epileptic seizure before the person feels any symptoms. (Also Animal Planet.)

A bloodhound located the body of a kidnap victim three days after she was reported missing, by tracing the path of the car she was taken in, to a rural road three highway exits from the scene of her disappearance.

It's a shame that more police departments can't afford the full-time use of dog handlers with trained bloodhounds to find missing children. The stories always seem to involve finding a body, after police have exhausted other leads.

My cocker spaniel would love that kind of nose-work, but I know she'd embarrass me by rolling on the dead body.

You're wrong about dogs liking all smells. The smell of soap or dog shampoo sends them scrambling. The nearest dead thing, even the tiniest dead lizard, gets rolled on as an antidote to the soap smell.

 

[Guest]

i love my dog so much.. but...
my little boxer/pitbull mutt seems to love anything that looks like, smells like poo. cat poo is to her what godiva is to me.

god love her, i think shes brain dead. its her choice of perfume if shes outside on her own. why cant she equate rolling on this will only get her an outside shower?
i can handle just about anything but this will drive me slowly over the edge.

ive heard there are antidotes out there.. have tried changing food.. have come to the realization that she is skewed. ah, such is life.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

We had a dog who was autocoprophagic.

MathGirl can probably tell you what that one means. Or you can just figure it out on your own. She was the one who gave rise to my "nothing smells bad to a dog" theory. (The dog I mean, not MG.)

---dr.M.

 

[cantdog]

The cat poo thing is very off-putting.

Visiting dogs always headed right for the catbox and came out making grunts of sheer pleasure with clay bits all over their whiskers.

Their owner's a nice woman, and it embarrassed her no end.


Dog shampoos are laden with deodorant. If deodorant actually works, it would be anathema to an animal with as much of its brain involved in smells as a dog; and if it merely covers odors with a reek of its own, we ought to remember that the smell of a dog is its identity.

I sympathize with the dog, vella. I won't own one in town and I'm not sure I'd change my mind in the country.


cantdog

 

[cloudy]

The reason dog's will roll in vile and smelly stuff is to disguise their own scent. It's easy to forget that our domestic buddies were once predators.

Of course, that depends on the type of dog you have. A chihuahua doesn't look as much like a predator as my Akita does, but they all were once hunters.

Cat's mark their territory as well, by rubbing the sides of their faces on you. Yep, not pure affection, even tho it seems that way. They are marking you as theirs.

 

[cheerful_deviant]

Cat's mark their territory as well, by rubbing the sides of their faces on you. Yep, not pure affection, even tho it seems that way. They are marking you as theirs.

Anyone who has ever owned a cat will tell you this is true. Cat's definitly regard you as theit property.

P.S. Cloudy, love the new AV!

 

[raphy]

Dog shampoos are laden with deodorant. If deodorant actually works, it would be anathema to an animal with as much of its brain involved in smells as a dog; and if it merely covers odors with a reek of its own, we ought to remember that the smell of a dog is its identity.

That's exactly it ..

Whisp and I actually had a very long talk about this one night (Because we have a crazy psycho puppy who sniffs everything) and I posed the question:

"If dogs use scent in the same way that humans use sound, are there any smells that dogs don't like?"

And we reasoned that deodorants and suchlike come into that category. When I'm talking about humans using sound, I'm not talking about language. This is one level lower than language.

But - Who here actually likes the sound of fingernails being scraped down a blackboard? That's a non-language sound that is distressing to our ears.

I imagine that deodorant is a non-language smell that is distressing to a dog's nose in the same way.

Whether dogs actually have a "language" of scent is probably something we'll never ever discover. Do they have nouns? Verbs? Adjectives? Can they form complex sentences? Would they even want to?

 

[shereads]

i love my dog so much.. but...
my little boxer/pitbull mutt seems to love anything that looks like, smells like poo. cat poo is to her what godiva is to me.

god love her, i think shes brain dead. its her choice of perfume if shes outside on her own.

It's an instinct inherited from their wolf ancestors. A caribou, sniffing the wind, would think, "No predators around here, just an enormous pile of cat poo."

 

[shereads]

That's exactly it ..

Whisp and I actually had a very long talk about this one night (Because we have a crazy psycho puppy who sniffs everything) and I posed the question:

"If dogs use scent in the same way that humans use sound, are there any smells that dogs don't like?"

And we reasoned that deodorants and suchlike come into that category. When I'm talking about humans using sound, I'm not talking about language. This is one level lower than language.

But - Who here actually likes the sound of fingernails being scraped down a blackboard? That's a non-language sound that is distressing to our ears.

I imagine that deodorant is a non-language smell that is distressing to a dog's nose in the same way.

Whether dogs actually have a "language" of scent is probably something we'll never ever discover. Do they have nouns? Verbs? Adjectives? Can they form complex sentences? Would they even want to?

Probably true about the unnatural scents in dog shampoos. When I bathe The Beast I rinse as well as I can so she won't be tormented by chemical smells. I dab a little lavendar essential oil on her when I can catch her.



I also wonder what it's like to experience the world primarily through scent instead of sight. For one thing, closing your eyes to sleep wouldn't begin to shut out distractions, would it? Do they un-smell the world when they sleep?

My pooch is old and losing her eyesight and hearing, but one of her favorite games has always been finding a ball thrown into the back yard at night. Now that she's becoming blind, she enjoys the game just as much in the daytime. She can find the ball by sight, only if she reaches it while it's still rolling or bouncing. Otherwise, she puts her snout to the ground and covers the yard in a zig-zag pattern, huffing and snorting and wagging her tail furiously until she finds it. And she always finds it, even if it's caught up inside the hedge.

No one can fool The Miracle Snooter. (Snooter, fyi, is the long part of the dog nose. The round wet part is the beeper. Sorry to get technical on you, but these are useful terms if you want to talk ridiculous baby-talk nonsense to your puppy and embarrass it in front of other puppies.)

 

[raphy]

Probably true about the unnatural scents in dog shampoos. When I bathe The Beast I rinse as well as I can so she won't be tormented by chemical smells. I dab a little lavendar essential oil on her when I can catch her.



I also wonder what it's like to experience the world primarily through scent instead of sight. For one thing, closing your eyes to sleep wouldn't begin to shut out distractions, would it? Do they un-smell the world when they sleep?

My pooch is old and losing her eyesight and hearing, but one of her favorite games has always been finding a ball thrown into the back yard at night. Now that she's becoming blind, she enjoys the game just as much in the daytime. She can find the ball by sight, only if she reaches it while it's still rolling or bouncing. Otherwise, she puts her snout to the ground and covers the yard in a zig-zag pattern, huffing and snorting and wagging her tail furiously until she finds it. And she always finds it, even if it's caught up inside the hedge.

No one can fool The Miracle Snooter. (Snooter, fyi, is the long part of the dog nose. The round wet part is the beeper. Sorry to get technical on you, but these are useful terms if you want to talk ridiculous baby-talk nonsense to your puppy and embarrass it in front of other puppies.)

Our dog is half labrador and I tell you, she will fetch until you're too tired to throw. She's a smart sniffer, as well - If she didn't see (or hear) where the ball landed, she'll pick a spot to start and then either travel in increasingly large circles, nose to the ground, or quarter the area, section by section.

But she can't smell too well if she's tired and panting heavily.

You raise an interesting question about sleeping, though. One that I obviously have no answer for, since I haven't managed to initiate any meaningful conceptual conversation between Kimber and myself.

Whenh she starts talking to me, I'll ask her and see what she says.

 

[cloudy]

Our dog is half labrador and I tell you, she will fetch until you're too tired to throw. She's a smart sniffer, as well - If she didn't see (or hear) where the ball landed, she'll pick a spot to start and then either travel in increasingly large circles, nose to the ground, or quarter the area, section by section.

But she can't smell too well if she's tired and panting heavily.

You raise an interesting question about sleeping, though. One that I obviously have no answer for, since I haven't managed to initiate any meaningful conceptual conversation between Kimber and myself.

Whenh she starts talking to me, I'll ask her and see what she says.

When I used to try to throw a ball for Mojo, he'd look at me with disdain, as if he just couldn't believe I would expect him to lower himself to find a mere ball.

Those great, big rawhide chews are another matter entirely. He still won't chase them, but I sure as hell don't want to try to take one away from him.

 

[shereads]

There's a beagle at the dog park who loves to chase a ball and emits one of those crazed hound-dog howls until it's thrown, but once he reaches the ball he sniffs it once, turns around and smiles at his owner and leaves it where it landed. He's trained his owner to retrieve the ball.

Cant, I know what you mean about the visitors and the cat box. I was the visitor and it was my dog, and we wondered why she had been so quiet all evening while everybody played backgammon...Until she emerged from the room with the litter box, fat and happy.

Is there a worse odor on the planet?

 

[shereads]

She's like the average Literotica reader who wants the stories but has no interest in the author.

Does that really happen?



How ungrateful!