How Well Do You Know Your Dog? Enough to Recognize Him by Smell?

According to a study at The Queen’s University of Belfast, our knowledge of our dog goes well beyond what we see. The study at the Canine Behaviour Center in the School of Psychology "examined the ability of humans to identify individual dogs by smell.”

In the study, dog owners smelled two blankets — one that had been infused with the individual odor of their dog, and one that had the smell of an unfamiliar dog. To infuse a dog’s smell in a blanket, the researchers placed the blanket in the dog’s bed for three nights with nothing else in there. Dog owners were blindfolded and then smelled the two blankets.


So what happened in the sniff test? Owners rocked! Without the help of visual cues, 88.5% were able to accurately say which blanket smelled like their dog (23 out of 26 owners).

Read more about the study here