Hello there.... it's me Tobie and I have my nose to the wind checking out all the smells of the country life.
How does a basset get the neighborhood news? Through it's nose of course.

Of all a dog's senses, it's sense of smell is the most highly developed. Dogs have about 25 more times olfactory (smell) receptors than humans do. These receptors occur in special sniffing cells deep in a dog's snout and are what allow a dog to "out-smell" humans.

Dogs can sense odors at concentrations nearly 100 million times lower than humans can. They can detect one drop of blood in five quarts of water!!! Sniffing the bare sidewalk may seem crazy, but it yields a wealth of information to your dog, whether it's the scent of the poodle next door or a whiff of the bacon sandwich someone dropped last week.

When a dog breathes normally, air doesn't pass directly over the smell receptors. But when a dog takes a deep sniff, the air travels all the way to the smell receptors, near the back of the dog's snout. So for a dog, sniffing is a big part of smelling.

A dog can sniff out all sorts of smells that human noses miss. Because of this keen sense of smell, we can train them for jobs such as tracking, rescue, or drug and bomb detection and to detect a wide variety of specific scents, such as drugs, fruits or the feces of particular animals. Dogs that make a living by sniffing are trained to alert their handlers to the presence of these things by pawing, barking, or in the case of something dangerous, sitting quietly. They are trained by the promise of a favorite toy or play time each time they successfully sniff out the target scent.

I am so glad I could give you this lesson in how a dog's nose works.
Have a great weekend.
Tobie

He looks pretty comfy to me - what do you all think?
This is Oliver - adopted from us back in 2003 and returned to us a few weeks ago because the child in the family is allergic to him. He is a great basset but is now approaching middle age so is not so attractive as an adoptable basset.
He has settled back into our home like he has always lived here.... it is always amazing how quickly they remember that they once lived under our roof and are happy to be here again.