Dogs

[muchlovex]

Why do dogs get soo excited when they're going to be walked? Also, they always have to sniff a scent left by another dog and sniff for what seems like ages.

Why do they do this?

I know they're marking their territory.

TIA

[wolf63]

I used to be taken for 'draggies' every evening by my mutt. It was a race from here to the park stopping momentarily at every lamp-post en-route. It was a nightmare.

Coming back was always at a normal pace, all the scents had been sniffed and he had done all his peeing.

[CrazyWolfman]

Although it's scientifically hard to prove, as far as I'm concerned dogs get excited before walks simply because they enjoy going out. As for the scent marking, dogs, as I'm sure you already know, have a very keen sense of smell (in wolves it's estimated to be 1000 times better than ours). This means not only are smells more apparent to them, but also that they are much better at identifying the individual constituents of any mixture of smells. So sniffing a scent marking is to a dog a highly interesting activity, considering they can tell such things as gender, age, diet, health, stress levels and of course, whether or not the other dog is ready to mate. I imagine that, if you had a sense of smell that good you would be much more prepared to sniff things. Or perhaps not.

Although the relevant behaviours are based on what was originally territorial marking it's probably best to think of them in this kind of situation as a calling card system, something like an olfactory e-mail, so that dogs can keep track of each other without necessarily meeting.

[happy_face]

If I was house/garden bound 24/7 then I too would get really excited to go out for walks and meet other people.

Because you love your home it doens't mean to say your dog loves it just as much. After all they come from the wild wolf