Originally published at: Take your dog on a "sniff walk" - Boing Boing
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I always feel bad for the dogs getting yanked along. Saw one poor pooch who kept delaying to poop, get yanked forward, waddle-crouch to poop a bit again, and yanked forward. I don’t usually bother people but I was about to jog and catch up to this person and ask them to please let their poor dog poop when they finally realized the issue and stopped.
While they picked up that deposit, of course they didn’t get the 3 pieces of poop strung out 20 ft behind. The poor pup 
Some dogs, particularly high energy, seem to enjoy a brisk walk. But I always hope there is a cool down on the way home for some meandering
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Our mutt has a strong hunting-dog streak in his genetic mix. Not sure what, but he’s all business once he picks up a scent of something interesting (usually a possum or rat).
All walks with him are sniff walks, but he’s mostly not lingering - he’s looking, desperately, for a scent to pick up and follow. If it’s not around here, he needs to get over there to look for one. So our “walks” are typically him dragging us along, with him constantly reaching for something about 2 meters away from the end of his lead.
Once he finds something, it’s another story. Very careful and quiet, doesn’t rush. Mustn’t scare anything away. He’ll find which tree it went up, and silently and carefully put a paw on the trunk, pointing up with his nose.
It’s fascinating, because we don’t go hunting at all - this is all something he was born with.
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This is us.
We have a rescue that’s a hound mix and we were desperately trying to get her to “walk nice” until a dog trainer told us the value of sniffing. Now every walk is a sniff walk. I don’t mind the sniffing, it’s the yanking us between spots that drives me nuts.
That being said, I’m still jealous of the people with dogs who happily amble alongside them at the owner’s pace.
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I feel that.
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Every walk is a sniff walk. Walking without getting to sniff is like walking down a street full of shops and not being allowed to look in the windows. It’s like not being allowed to browse in the bookshop. One chap I see jogging with his poor dog on a lead, trying to keep up. I used to know a boy who thought the best way to exercise the dog was to ride his bicycle with it on the lead. He was such a cretin. Our current dogs are new to us, and have only been with us less than a year. I let them chose which direction to take, and I’ve learned more about the local alleys (they’re called “ginnels” around here) in six months than I’ve learned in the ten years previously. Dogs use their noses the way we use our eyesight. That’s why human and dog are a great team.
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Gotta let the dogs check their p-mail. 
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All my dog’s walks are “sniff” walks - she’s small with little legs, and I’ve only got three gears - Mosey, Amble, and Reverse - so there’s no need to rush.
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Daily sniffari really solves a lot of the issues of my moody terrier mix. The hound/pug mix is happy too, but she really needs to run to work out her energy in the evening.
I make my dogs walk a mile every day, so eventually they get enough sniffing and I can get an uninterrupted walk in for myself too.
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Now that my dog is getting older he really has no interest in walking anymore. But, he still loves meandering and sniffing. We travel full time so his front door opens onto a new site every week or so. I think it’s been really great for him to still experience new things now that we can’t hike with him or take him to parks anymore.
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That’s what I’ve always been taught. Dogs need to stop and sense the smells out there. It’s one way of knowing where they are, if in a familiar area, and their way of telling whether other dogs have been there. Besides, male dogs urinate to mark their territory, hence, why they lift a leg instead of kneeling both hind legs once puberty sets in.
And to the human owner: Don’t discount the walk you’re getting as “not exercise”, because even strolling along to the dogs’ tempo has its health benefits.
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Tried a harness on my cat a few times and she made it abundantly clear that if I put a harness on her, I’ll be taking her out for a drag, not a walk. Always a little envious of people whose cats are open to being walked.
Used to pet-sit a black and tan coonhound-- trying to get him to not follow a scent on a walk was a fool’s errand.
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I feel that a big caveat missing here is that leash training is more about ensuring your dog is aware of, attentive, and responsive to you and your commands at all times. Not (necessarily) about whether you’re depriving your dog of something fundamental. Sniffing is fine, but if it’s on-leash, it’s on the walker’s terms, not the dog’s.
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And leave the phone at home. I think seeing children being absent mindedly pushed on a swing by doomscrolling parents or dogs staring at their phione engrossed friends are soem of the sad common sights of the day.
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Dogs can detect more different smells than humans see colors. That explains why dogs (mine at least) tend to sniff the same spots on every walk. Where I can’t imagine what is different about that tree stump from the last time we passed it, for the dogs, it’s an entirely new experience because the smells have changed since the last walk.
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Dogs use smell to help visualize the world, similar to bats and echolocation.
Thanks to Jennifer Sandlin for another wonderful thing.
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My personal preference is that my dog has to stay with me. If I stop, he stops. If I tell him “sniff,” he has permission to wander as far as the leash end, or more if I’m moving with him. That keeps me from being dragged sideways every time he sees a bush he wants to smell (a previous dog of mine did that) or having him mark everywhere (he doesn’t need to do that). He’s really good at this. He gets to sniff a lot, but not everywhere. If he’s done sniffing he comes back to me at my heel and waits. If I want him there sooner, I call him (I use “to me”) and he does that. He’s happy, I’m happy.
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