Quote: lance_wright

dogs do not smell fear..... Like one person said they could find a person no matter what smell they had. However dogs are masters of body language, they can read the body language of people better than people can.

Right. Not fear, per se. But those things commonly associated with it. Things associated with the physiological process which all humans under stress undergo. It would stand to reason that if dogs use our uninential cues during training to anticipate our command, a police k9 would certainly pick-up on cues usually associated with someone about to get bit, or followed, or other fun stuff....whether we intend it or not. Like me reaching into a particular coat pocket for something...where my toy usually is....woops...there he goes getting all excited. I'd imagine a scent marker works just like a visual or audio one, right? Just a little harder to package and distribute.

The stress response induces the production of adrenaline, cortisone, epinephrine etc. This is a qualitativly different physiological state than a non-stressed person, not just more of the same. That is not to say a dog could not would not find a non-stressed person. The point of contention is whether or not they CAN smell the difference. Heck, dogs can smell the difference between healthy and cancerous skin.

Just like a dog doesn't smell "diabetes", but it can be conditioned to smell the ketosis breath associated with it.

So, to Vicky's original question, it sounds like you got sort of a convoluted answer originally. Not sure how valid it is to dice up all these different smells (coming from one basic source...a person) and conclude what exactly the dog would be smelling. Especially since, as stated, dogs find all sorts of non-human scents as well.

 Quote: Excerpt from Cesar’s Way by Cesar Millan, Chapter Two: If We Could Talk To Animals

...I’m here to assure you that, yes, these animals do know exactly what their owners are feeling. A French study concluded that dogs may actually also use their sense of smell to help distinguish between human emotional states. I’m not a scientist, but after a lifetime of being around dogs, my opinion is that, without question, dogs can sense even the most subtle changes in the energy and emotions of the humans around them....

IMO, I believe dogs do smell emotions…..not just fear. Every emotion is triggered by hormones/chemicals and every emotion consist of different hormones/chemicals at varying levels which creates a unique scent available through the pores of the skin almost immediately following an emotional change.

Lance - in my opinion I believe you happen to be wrong. Dogs react to and smell a fear scent. I do believe its a learned issue.

If you talk to any K9 officer who has made felony arrests I doubt you will find any that truly understand dog training that will would say dogs cant smell fear scent

There are many sources (books and web sites) that maintain that dogs don't smell fear, per se, but are expert at reading body language. (Fear pheromones had been identified in fish and bees, but not so much mammals.)

But in the late 1990s and early 2000s, new research showed that they did both.

According to work by an Austrian, Karl Grammer, in 2002, dogs and horses can smell fear in humans. (Ackerl, Atzmueller & Grammer, Neuroendocrinol Lett 2002; 23(2): 79-84). The implication of the study was that a chemical signal is secreted in sweat which communicates the emotion.

Anyway, that was the way I understood it. It's heavy reading.

Also, work by Denise Chen (Chen & Haviland-Jones, Physiology and Behaviour 1999; 68: 241-250) has demonstrated the ability of underarm odour to influence mood in others and allowed others to identify fear in the smell of the sweat of people who had just watched a frightening movie.

http://www.nel.edu/23_2/NEL230202R01_Grammer.htm
http://www.senseofsmell.org/resources/scientific_a.php?value=Pheromones

Very interesting.

better go back to tracking 101, dogs do not smell fear....

Lance, check your PM's.

Will Rambeau
Moderator

Lance with all do respect I do believe Police dogs do smell a different type of scent. I base this on the experience of several hundred K9 applications and numerous apprehnsions.

I agree completely with what Ed said. Experienced Police dogs can bypass the scent of other Cops, Civilians etc. and concentrate on a suspect's scent.

In a lot of cases this is not a track in the true sense of the word. They are trailing in most cases and/or air scenting.

My only reason for posting this is that I believe, in my experience, that Police Dogs do smell a different scent and I believe it is scent caused by fear of being apprehended. Or at least a scent that is caused by being under a great amount of stress.

I think the answer to what the original poster was asking is the dog can smell a different scent caused by stress. I base this on years of observation.