At Marin Humane, we are always seeking creative ways to help our shelter animals get adopted. One special approach harnesses the fabulous olfactory powers of dogs.
I often say that there is no greater treat for my dog Digby than when he gets to stick his nose out the car window while I drive. I imagine that to him it’s a delicious smorgasbord of smells! We all know that dogs have a superior sense of smell. In fact, theirs overpowers our own by orders of magnitude. Incredibly, it’s 10,000 to 100,000 times as acute!
In her book, Inside of a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz, a dog-cognition researcher at Barnard College, writes that while our noses might notice if our coffee has had a teaspoon of sugar added to it, a dog could detect a teaspoon of sugar in a million gallons of water – two Olympic-sized pools’ worth. Another dog scientist likened the canine’s olfactory ability to catching the whiff of one rotten apple in two million barrels. The science show Nova reports that dogs can detect some odors in parts per trillion.
What do dogs have that we don’t? For one thing, they possess up to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses, compared to about six million in ours. And the part of a dog’s brain dedicated to analyzing smells is 40 times greater than in the human brain.
Dogs have used their super sniffers to help humans for decades, performing such vital tasks as finding missing persons and sniffing out drugs and bombs. In recent years it has come to light that a dog can sense when his guardian is about to have a seizure and can even detect cancer and sense where it is.
According to a New York Times article, “Since 2004, research has begun to accumulate suggesting that dogs may be able to smell the subtle chemical differences between healthy and cancerous tissue, including bladder cancer, melanoma, and cancers of the lung, breast, and prostate… Dogs have already been trained to respond to diabetic emergencies, or alert passers-by if an owner is about to have a seizure.”
With a sense of smell so sophisticated, it’s no wonder dogs are now being employed to sniff out a creepy scourge of many cities — bed bugs! Dogs are being dispatched to root out the speck-sized parasites in hotels, apartments, and schools.
On occasion, when the Marin Humane Society finds it especially challenging to place dogs with exceptional sniffer skills, we’ll reach out to other organizations to see if they might make good working dogs.
Spy is one such example. This gorgeous black German Shepherd seemed especially task- and scent-oriented. She had a great deal of energy and required experienced handlers, so she wasn’t a great fit for most families.
The Marin Humane Society reached out to local police dog training groups and even a bed bug abatement company. Still, for one reason or another, Spy wasn’t selected. Finally, through the help of Bay Area German Shepherd Rescue, Spy was accepted at the Inglis Police Dog Academy in Southern California.
Typically, dogs employed to help humans live with their human handlers, who ensure that they receive lots of loving attention, on and off the job. But how to get Spy to Southern California from Marin? Enter Wings of Rescue, a nonprofit organization that flies homeless animals via private plane to their new homes.
If you want to check out what your dog’s nose knows, consider taking one of the Marin Humane Society’s nose-work classes – Introduction to Scenting, Extreme Scenting, and Working with Odor. To learn more about these classes and all our programs, visit marinhumanesociety.org.
This year, may all homeless animals find forever homes where they can show off their super sniffing powers, toy-playing prowess, lap-sitting skills, and whatever other talents they may possess.
Lisa Bloch is the director of marketing and communications at The Marin Humane Society. She lives in Mill Valley with Digby the Dog and Magic the Cat, both rescue animals, as well as her human daughter. She can be reached at atlbloch@marinhumanesociety.org.
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