Sniffing is Not a Crime
When Lilly and I took our first in-the-ring “obedience” exam when she was about 9 months old, we lost a few points because she sniffed the ground during HEEL. She still took first place, by a LONG shot, but looking back (knowing what I know now about dogs and training), I have to laugh. I understand that in such a formal setting doing anything other than the task at hand is akin to a balk or refusal in the agility ring, but seriously, sniffing is not a crime. With that in mind, I’ve been paying attention to Lilly’s need to sniff on our walks lately, and here are my “clinical” observations.
Lilly sniffs less during the out part of our out-and-back route. The distance gone before turning around does not matter. If we go all the way to the ridge, where we can see the Continental Divide, or if we merely go to the top of the first hill, she sniffs more along the edge of the road on the way back. So, it isn’t time or distance. It’s retracing our steps that causes her to sniff more.
That seems counter-intuitive to me. Any ideas on why that might be?
I also work hard NOT to tug, cajole, or otherwise convince her to move on. Whereas Tom regularly hurries her along, I consciously let her sniff because I learned during research for a magazine article I wrote recently on keeping a dog’s mind busy that dogs truly live their daily lives awash in smells of all kinds. Where we typically live in a visual reality, dogs live in a scented one.
Think if it like a constant news ticker running up their noses and into their brains. It’s like a CNN news crawl inside their snouts. Or like learning a foreign language in your sleep, or listening to books on tape while you drive.
So, using a strategy I learned from Gigi Moss, our trainer, I let Lilly sniff as much as she wants, then reward her with either click/treat or praise/treat when she picks up her head and moves along of her own accord. Essentially, it’s a way to teach that tuning out the smell-sensory overload and turning back into me is a rewardable action.
At the same time, though, she knows (I hope) that I understand that the mental work of sniffing is as much fun and as important as the walk itself and time together.