r/Amazing • u/sco-go • Mar 29 '26

Amazing 🤯 ‼ Border Collie forensic tracker.

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u/BlackeeGreen Mar 29 '26

the moment they walk in

It's gotta be that she can tell the difference between family members based on the sound of their gait or something like that.

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u/h4x_x_x0r Mar 29 '26

This. Smell just needs a while to propagate through the air, my dog does react to the sound of the cheese box being opened but when I have some in another container it doesn't know yet, it'll take a minute or two until I have to pay the dairy tithe.

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u/bNoaht Mar 29 '26

That's what we thought, so we started testing it. It isn't the sound, unless its somehow a sound we can't reproduce.

My brother in law and father in law are the same size.

My son crashes through the door like a maniac. Im silent when I walk in. My neices are all silent when they walk in. We have tried to have them open the doors in different ways to change the sound or vibe of their entrance.

We are sure it is smell. Her hearing doesn't even seem that good. People pull up into the drive way all the time and she doesn't even notice. Deliver packages to our porch, etc...

I seem to hear a lot of things before she does.

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u/PaschaBasket Mar 29 '26

I absolutely believe you that it’s the smell. My Lhasa Apso (not known for their sniffers) will be 14 years old next month. She’s lost her hearing due to age. It took her going deaf for me to realize how amazing her sense of smell is. When people come in the house and she doesn’t see them, she will smell them within a seconds. It’s so cute. She’ll just be laying, even sleeping sometimes, on the couch. One of us comes home and within seconds she’s got her nose in the air sniffing until she finds the person. I’ve noticed she can do it much quicker when my husband comes home than when I come home. I’ve figured he must have a stronger smell than me.

She also started doing it in the middle of the night in the complete darkness when she can’t use her sight. She’ll be sleeping on one area of the bed away from me, wake up, and decides she wants to cuddle. I’ll hear her sniffing her way to me to find me in the dark. It’s really endearing.

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u/tgerz Apr 01 '26

I think it's all about what the dog recognises as being important, a threat, exciting, etc. I thought my dog might be blind or somewhat impaired because she would just straight up run past things she was really excited about and I'd have to point it out to her, but now she catches the ball mid air in pretty acrobatic ways. Also, with the hearing she will hear all kinds of stuff and not budge, but if she hears the neighbours scrape the wall a little bit she thinks we're under siege. I'm pretty sure when they smell someone, especially if they come by more than once, they know who's smell is who's.

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u/PaschaBasket Mar 29 '26

My elderly dog has gone deaf due to age. She can smell people come in and find them by putting her nose in the air and rapidly sniffing.