by Kimberly Hill
Dogs are one of the best animals and a man’s best friend. Not only are they very playful, protective, and loyal, but also very competent when it comes to learning new stuff. They have a knack for learning and can quickly adapt to new things.
It is much easier to train dogs than other animals. They have excellent senses too and can detect stuff very well. This is why you get to see so many guard dogs. They can help detect drugs or people’s scent from a distance.
These friendly animals are great and all, but how far can their senses go? Can they smell something even from a vacuum-sealed bag? These are some questions a lot of people wonder, and we are here to answer your curiosity.
It depends on the situation, but most of the time, yes, they can. There is a limit to how far a sense can go, and even dogs have it. There are ways you can improve their senses but not much.
A person needs to be very thorough with the sealing process to avoid getting detected by dogs. Dogs mainly detect the odor coming from the packages. Even if it is airtight, the odor on the bag can give it away.
So, if you can make sure that the bags are entirely odorless, you may have a chance to get away without detection. However, there is another dead giveaway with vacuum-sealed bags.
Suppose the bag is plastic, then the smell can leak over time. So, the longer you wait, the smell is only going to get worse. Dogs have a mighty nose, and getting away from it without getting detected will be hard for anyone.
Therefore, you have to seal the bag in a laboratory, but it can be evident for dogs even then. Vacuum seals take the air out of the bags, but there is one problem. The air inside of the bag already reeks with the smell from the stuff inside.
When the vacuum takes the contaminated air out, it has to go somewhere. So, what better place to settle in other than the outside of the bag. There are always traces available for dogs to check.
For starters, the most obvious thing is their nose. Everyone knows that dogs can smell things much better than humans, but how good is their nose? How much better can their nose be from us? Well, let us find out.
Smelling is the primary sense of a dog. The ability to smell is called olfaction. Dogs have been relying on their nose for thousands of years to hunt their prey. It is only natural that their senses will improve.
Dogs have over 300 million olfactory receptors on their nose, while humans have only 5 million. You can already tell how powerful their nose is. This bodily feature is standard for almost any dog, but even that can improve with proper training.
Moreover, there are tiny hairs on each cell that help with smelling stuff, and the more of these you have, the better your ability to smell. The scientific name of this hair is cilia. Humans have about 6-8 cilia, while dogs have around 150.
So, you can guess it by now that tracking the traces of anything is not a problem for dogs. Plus, their brains are more capable of analyzing these smells than us. If you want numbers, about 40 times better than humans.
Overall, dogs are far superior to us when it comes to smelling and detecting something, and these are the ways they are capable of doing that. You can also improve their ability by training them.
You have probably seen guard dogs in the airport or with the police. There is something special about them. They go through various training, and they are more capable of doing stuff than your average household dog.
So, how do you improve your dog’s sense of smell? There are many ways you can train your dog for smell detection, but the best way to train them is by giving them treats and your time.
You need to spend a lot of time with them and be very patient. It can take more than half a year, depending on which breed dog you have. Labradors are the best when it comes to this since they learn fast and are incredibly obedient.
The most important thing to notice is their behaviors. You have to understand them very well to proceed further. Also, you must give them rewards every step of the way. This way, they will be happy and more enthusiastic about this training.
Also, this reward can be more playtime or more food, depends on what you give and what your dog wants. You frequently have to keep in check what your dog is trying to tell you.
The whole process can be much easier if you have a better understanding of your pet.
It is hard to distinguish their behavior sometimes. Nevertheless, it is essential to keep these in check when you are trying to train your dog. Your dog will change the usual behavior when it has something to tell you.
If you can keep an eye out, you can quickly tell the difference. Firstly, your dog will go into alert mode when it finds something suspicious. You can see the dog’s ears rising, jaws tensing up, head-turning, and body freezing.
Then there are some other things to notice too. When the dog goes into full alert mode, it will start to sniff around everything vigorously and refuse to move away from something suspicious. These are the simple ways you can quickly identify.
People are training dogs for years, and it is going getting better and better. More and more techniques are coming, and dogs are getting more knowledgeable. Even if the containers are vacuum sealed, it will not be an issue for a well-trained dog.
About Kimberly Hill
Now it is just me, Kimberly Hill living in New York city, N.Y.
Loves to blog about various aspects of life that matter most.
Received the BA degree in Art History from Stanford University of California.
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