Experiments on the Sense of Smell in Dogs ¹

Abstract

I ONCE tried an experiment with a terrier of my own, which shows, better than anything that I have ever read, the almost supernatural capabilities of smell in dogs. On a Bank holiday, when the Broad Walk in Regent's Park was swarming with people of all kinds, walking in all directions, I took my terrier (which I knew had a splendid nose, and could track me for miles) along the walk, and, when his attention was diverted by a strange dog, I suddenly made a number of zigzags across the Broad Walk, then stood on a seat, and watched the terrier. Finding I had not continued in the direction I was going when he left me, he went to the place where he had last seen me, and there, picking up my scent, tracked my footsteps over all the zigzags I had made, until he found me. Now, in order to do this, he had to distinguish my trail from at least a hundred others quite as fresh, and many thousands of others not so fresh, crossing it at all angles.²