How did my dog know how to get home when he was lost?Jennifer Vanderau, Cumberland Valley
Q: I have somewhat of an odd question. I was taking my dog for a walk the other evening, and I took the long way home. It was also kind of the back way — he wasn’t used to walking the way we came into the yard. This sounds kind of weird, but as soon as we hit the back of our yard, he seemed to know he was home. Can dogs recognize their own yards?
A: This actually isn’t an odd question at all. It’s quite insightful and shows that you’re really paying attention to your boy and I love that. I think the answer to your question lies in the power of a dog’s nose. As humans, it’s difficult for us to truly understand how it actually works.
First of all, dogs can smell a whole lot better than we can — and as I understand it, they smell in a different way. The best way I know to describe it is when we smell a cheeseburger, for instance, we smell the entirety of the burger, whereas a dog is able to discern each scent — the burger, the ketchup, the mayo, the mustard, the lettuce, etc. It really is difficult for us to comprehend it because our sense of smell sort of lumps everything together and our brain tells us “cheeseburger.” So when your dog is on a walk and his nose is to the ground or even sometimes in the air, the different scents he’s picking up on are rather remarkable. I also believe he is able to differentiate between odors from different animals as well. For instance, when he’s reading his pee-mail (I couldn’t help it. That just cracks me up), he’s able to tell what each dog in the neighborhood has…ahem…”written” for him. He’s also able to tell when he “writes” back. Because of that, I would imagine once he got back to his yard, no matter where the grass begins or how he comes upon it, he would be able to recognize his own scent. So, no, it’s not weird at all that he seemed to know he was home.
Also (and at this point, you likely weren’t looking for a doctoral dissertation on a dog’s nose, but I am a bit of a geek, so here we are), there have been a lot of stories that talk about how dogs who become lost can find their way home, sometimes even from miles away. They rely on overlapping circles of familiar scents. For instance, if he finds a trail from a neighbor dog, that could lead to a trail from another neighbor dog, which could have a human scent of a neighbor that’s close to your scent and he continues to follow those circular scent patterns until he’s home. Apparently it’s somewhat similar to how we use cell phone towers to find specific locations.
The really crazy thing — and at this point, I’m just going for the digression — is that cats and pigeons use the iron in their bodies to home in on the magnetic direction in the ground. You know, like magnetic north. Is your jaw hanging open, too? How wild is that? Science is still looking into exactly how animals navigate, so it’s hard to tell what we’ll be able to learn or know in the upcoming decades. Thank you for writing this fascinating question!
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Ask the shelter is a weekly feature aimed at pet education. Jennifer Vanderau is the Public Relations Coordinator for the Cumberland Valley Animal Shelter. If you have a question, please email cvascomm@cvas-pets.org.
This article originally appeared on Chambersburg Public Opinion: How did my dog know how to get home when he was lost?
Source: Nature
