My Club was very fortunate to have the opportunity to listen to Tom Brownlee speak to us and give a shorter version of his Olfaction & Scent Basics seminar. Three and a half hours just FLEW by!

In an effort to retain the material, I reviewed my notes from that seminar and thought it might be useful to all to share:

Ever seen a skeletal head of a big dog or wolf? They have a honeycomb
of turbanates which are covered with a layer of tissue, which are covered
with receptors, and each of those have dendrites, microscopic hairs which
have kinky shapes which trap gas molecules.

Dogs have 220 Million receptor cells, humans have only 50 Million.
The Olfactory bulb of a dog's brain takes up 50% of the grey matter,
whereas in a human it's only about 12%.
Conservatively, they can smell 120 times better than we can...
do all the math in their favor and it's more like 330 times better.

The nairs of a dog do amazing work to stir the air. Normally the air circulates
in one direction when inhaling and the other when exhaling, though they can
click a valve to seperate them so one works the opposite direction to plow up
the scent in the air.

Gas molecules do not bond with others, are heavier than air, so tend to sink,
but very light so the different molecules tend to stratify and collect in low undisturbed
spots.

So there are many gases involved. Crushed vegetation gives off a diaminal butane.
Animal, vegatation and earth all give off a putrescin, and faunal skin and breath give off
a diaminal pentane. Spent adrenaline provides an epinephrine off of breath and sweat.
A cornicopia of scent creates a cone shape trail behind a track layer, whether it's a
training exercise, a criminal on the run, a lost child or alzhiemer's patient.

Scent tends to cling to moisture and vegetation, so the weeds in the cracks of
urban sidewalks are more interesting than the concrete, and morning dew is
an aid to tracking training. A 3 hour window is about all a trail can stay "hot" for,
and dry heat can shorten that window.

Dogs also have a vomero organ on the roof of their mouths as well,
tongue flicks and jaw chatters feed this organ with vital information.

We can train a dog to indicate on a given scent, be it a person, or a substance
in the case of drug or bomb detection, or other contraband, be it plastics or a plethora
of things which give off gases we cannot be aware of. The dog can detect parts per million.

OK, now this is just me rambling:

Amazing to us, so ill equipped to discern. Now one would think a creature who could smell so well
surely would have enough sense to know a cat turd is not a tootsie roll, but the fact is,
they can smell undigested protien and as scavengers, digest it. It disgusts us, but
we are not dogs.

So your dog's toy, with his slobber all over it, is not such a difficult task to find.

I have 2 gsds, my older female is a frisbee nutjob. Visiting kids were tossing frisbees on a Thursday,
while I was at work. Saturday, I asked her where was her frisbee? Off she went, nose to the ground,
casting left & right in an ever widening triangle. A bit later she was barking up a tree, on her hind legs.
One of the 2 frisbees was stuck up on a pine bough.

Later I asked her where the other one was, off she went, later she downed next to a privacy fence.
I thought she was just tired, and ignored it. Later I asked again, she went to the same place,
looked at me as if I was a moron, looked at the fence, back at me, as if to say, "I already answered your
dumb question!"

I went into the nieghbor's yard on the other side of where she sat and found her frisbee.

Yeah, they surely can smell something crazy ! In tracking, most days
it's a matter of them training us!