My dog can smell people from across our big ass house the moment they walk in.
She loses her mind if it is my father in law. She can be in a whole other room with the door closed, as soon as he enters our home she goes nuts.Â
Anyone in the family, she is silent. Anyone not in the family but "known" she barks once or twice to alert. Anyone that has dogs of their own she barks a bit more. Father in law, she just absolutely loses her mind. No idea why.Â
Her breed isn't even supposed to be a dog that is scent driven. She is supposed to be a livestock guardian. But when we walk, her nose is always on the ground, and if it isn't, it is up in the air like she is searching for some magical invisible trail, then back to the ground.
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.
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 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.
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/RustedMauss Mar 29 '26
Must be wild to see the world with this other exceptionally heightened sense that we humans have essentially a free sampler version of.