Dear Dogcharmer,
I have a mini poodle named Frankie. She’s lovely in every way, except that she constantly rolls in disgusting stuff — the worse the smell, the happier she is. Plus she spends forever smelling what looks to me like nothing but a piece of dirt or grass. The other day I could have taken a nap in the time she spent sniffing a broken branch on the ground. What’s up?
Lisa
Dear Lisa,
First, let me thank you on behalf of Frankie for giving her the time to sniff to her heart’s content. A bloodhound has up to 300 million olfactory cells in her nose. We two-leggeds only have about 5 million in our noses. My guess is your Frankie has in the vicinity of 200 million in her nose.
Mark Twain said, “If dogs could talk, nobody would own them.” That’s because, when you come home and Frankie smells your pants, she knows where you were, who and what you touched, and what you ate. Frankie’s nose is the encyclopedia of her environment. Lisa, that broken branch that bored the hell out of you was a trove of info to Frankie. Perhaps a chipmunk sat on it while eating an acorn, and was then chased away by a rat snake that caused the chipmunk to defecate in its escape. If Frankie could, she would describe the pivotal, life-or-death moment of the chipmunk, but alas, you’ll forever remain clueless of the momentous drama that unfolded under Frankie’s nose. That boring piece of dirt that she incessantly sniffed could have been a battlefield between a multitude of ants killing a beetle to bring back to the nest. We’ll never know, but Frankie does!
As for rolling in disgusting stuff, thank the dog’s wolf ancestry. To this day, if a wolf is hunting a deer, it will roll in any deer poop it can find to disguise its scent, and possibly get closer for a kill. To our domestic dog, what I believe is left of that wolf instinct is just a “feeling.” Frankie, the mini poodle, has no intention of trying to take down a deer. He will be expecting his dinner when he gets home. But rolling in that poop, it just “feels” right. Thank you, Mr. Wolf!
Dogcharmer Tom
Have a question for the Dogcharmer? Write him at dogsrshelby@msn.com. Find him on Instagram @DogTrainingDiaries.
