Your dog's nose is always working, sniffing out something inside the house or tracking down a scent on the street.
No matter what they are doing, dogs are always using their sense of smell, something they do to complement their view of the world around them.
The canine sense of smell is about a thousand times more sensitive than the human, since it can perceive everything that is within its reach, even things that a person is unable to see.
To get an idea, a dog has more than 220 million olfactory receptors in the nose, while humans only have 5 million.
Your dog's nose speaks about its health and alerts you when it is necessary to go to the vet.
The Truffle is the place where millions of olfactory sensors meet that help the pet to enjoy their day to day life.
Those who live with a dog at home are used to sniffing everything when they go out for a walk.
It is normal, it is part of their fun and it helps them to recognize smells, locate themselves in new destinations, identify friends who have passed through there before, etc.
This olfactory ability of dogs has a scientific explanation: they have millions of receptors in the nose that send all the information they receive through smell to the brain.
Dogs are able to detect cancer in humans only through their sense of smell.
But the nose can also tell us a lot about the health of our pet.
It's almost always damp, which helps it process odors more quickly, but the fact that it's not very dry is bound to be a serious problem.
Dogs can detect the presence of tumors in the prostate through urine.
Most people who have a pet for the first time wonder why their dog's nose is almost always moist: the answer lies in the glands of the nasal canals, which secrete mucus and fluids that moisten the external part of the nose. nose.
The dog usually licks it for this improvement to perceive the smells of its environment.
The puppy's tear duct is constantly at work, producing tears to lubricate the eyes.
On occasions when there are excess tears, they can fall to the animal's nose, something similar to what happens to humans when they cry.
When these fluids evaporate they cool your nose, helping to regulate your core body temperature.
Why does the nose get hot or dry sometimes?
It can be due to several reasons:
- In the morning it is dry for the simple reason that the animal has spent several hours asleep and has not licked the truffle.
- The wind or the sun have dried it, something that happens especially in older dogs.
- Having a fever, but it is usually something unusual.
Gary Weitzman, author of the book "The Complete Guide to Pet Health, Behavior, and Happiness," explains to seek veterinary help if you notice pronounced roughness or dryness in your dog's nose or see cracked skin or bleeding.
A hot or dry nose does not have to be alarming: but if this condition continues over time, it is best to visit the veterinarian.
It can be due to simple dehydration, but it can also be due to an allergy or an autoimmune problem.
In more serious cases, in addition to the nose, other symptoms such as loss of energy and appetite or weight loss will also be noted.
Weitzman points out that "these changes are indeed signs of a health problem, just like if our pet drinks significantly more or less water than usual."
A visit to the vet can save future problems.
If we see that there is a problem with its skin, hair or nails, or any of these symptoms accompany a nose that is hotter and drier than normal, it is best to go to a specialist to examine our pet in depth.
Dogs' sense of smell saves lives and catches cybercriminals.
Smell is the most developed sense of our best friends.
For humans, it has been useful since dogs began to be used for hunting, but new applications have emerged in the 21st century.
Paul Jackson's dog, Tinker, seemed to have fits of transient insanity.
For no apparent reason he began to cry, lick his owner's face and even cry.
Paul is diabetic, and over time he realized that the animal only acted that way before his owner suffered a hypoglycemic attack.
His best friend was also an accurate foot glucose test.
Tinker was recognized in 2009 as the first dog capable of detecting seizures in diabetes patients.
Although the animal died that same year, it laid the foundations for a program to be presented in the United Kingdom aimed at training more animals like him.
That your pet warns you half an hour in advance of an attack is always useful. but especially for the little ones.
A two-year-old child is incapable of knowing what is happening and notifying an adult, so this prodigious sense of smell can make the difference between life and death.
It is difficult to understand how an animal can differentiate abnormal, excessively high or low sugar content by the smell of blood.
It would be as complicated to understand it as it would be to explain colors to those who cannot see them: just as the human being is a visual animal, evolution has favored the senses of hearing and smell more in our pets.
Dogs have begun to be used to find electronic components such as computers or hard drives that may contain relevant information.
The olfactory bulb is the organ responsible for the sense of smell, and that of dogs is about forty times larger than that of humans, in proportion to the size of the brain.
The dog has been used for hunting since time immemorial.
Police dogs capable of finding traces of blood, bodily fluids, corpses and drugs are famous.
The dogs are also trained by the army to detect explosives and weapons.
The sense of smell of dogs has endless other applications.
Diabetes is not the medical application of the sense of smell of dogs, because cancer does not escape their sense of smell either.
Several studies have shown how these animals can detect cancer of the bladder, skin, lung, breast, ovaries and intestines, among others.
The key lies in certain compounds in the breath that dogs would be able to recognize.
Unlike what happens with animals like Tinker, it remains to be seen if our pets can develop detection systems that mimic the dog's sense of smell, it does not seem very practical to replace modern diagnostic techniques with an animal.
Dogs can also detect dangerous biological agents, from termites to bed bugs.
Hunting millimetric insects is surprising, it seems almost impossible that they can smell microorganisms.
A study ensures that Clostridium difficile , the bacterium responsible for some fairly serious hospital infections, does not escape its scanner either.
The animals in the experiment were not only able to identify those infected people, they also seemed able to detect the microbe in the air.
The ability to find other living things by smell has also been used successfully by conservationists.
Not only to catch criminals who traffic in protected species, but to track them in their natural habitats and take a census of them, based on their feces.
Dogs' sense of smell is not only limited to the most biological aspects: they can also follow the trail of technological components.
This ability has been used to control cell phone smuggling in prisons and even to find computers with sensitive material such as child pornography.
Memory cards, hard drives and even Ipads are impossible to hide from the nose of one of these trained animals.
The field of electronic detection is relatively recent: at the moment there are only three animals in the entire US capable of doing so.
The nose is the place where millions of olfactory sensors meet that help the pet to enjoy their day to day life.
Due to this subtle sense of smell, there are also some food or product odors that can be very annoying for them due to the intensity with which they perceive them.
It is better that you keep them out of their reach, these products are:
CHILLI PEPPERS:
Chili peppers cause the dog to hate their smell and they are very likely to run away.
This is due to the capsicum found in the seed and gives the chilli a spicy touch.
It can irritate its nostrils, even though it does not have any chemical compound that could be harmful to the animal.
GROUND SPICES:
They also can't stand the powerful and long-lasting smell of ground spices.
The ones they hate the most are cinnamon, nutmeg, mustard, ginger, and cayenne pepper.
CITRUS AND VINEGAR:
If for us vinegar has an unpleasant smell, in dogs it can generate disgust.
Many people use vinegar to mark off areas where they don't want dogs to pee or come near.
ALCOHOLIC DRINKS:
The smell given off by alcoholic beverages is also not pleasant for dogs.
The more degrees of alcohol the drink has, the farther you will see your dog and this causes some irritation in the nostrils.
PERFUMES AND NAIL POLISHES:
They irritate the nostrils of dogs and cause sneezing and itching, since they use a large amount of chemicals, such as acetone.
These odors are very annoying for them because of the intensity with which they perceive them.
CLEANING PRODUCTS:
They are very annoying and can cause acute irritation in the nostrils and esophagus, so we have to keep them well away from our pet to avoid risks that affect their health.
In Glu Glu Pet soon, we will have cleaning products for your home, totally natural and that do not affect your pets, for us their health and well-being is very important.
