Smelling other dogs?

[7an13l]

I’ve been walking my reactive dog at 5:30 am (today I thought I’d sleep in a bit and walked her at 6 and instead of 0-1 dogs I saw 3 that she thankfully was oblivious to, so back to 5:30 it is lol) and we found a pretty perfect route that gets us out and doing a sniffy walk (she by far prefers going slow and sniffing to walking further) for a full 25-30 min and back in time for breakfast at 6. If we have extra time or she was less sniffy we can head down a block to a little shopping area (always deserted) that includes a pet store that lots of dogs go in an out of every day. She spends a TON of time sniffing here when we do this - anyone know if this is good or bad? I wasn’t sure if it was good for her to smell other dogs since she literally never interacts with them, or if it would be bad and up her reactivity on the walk back. She seemed a little jumpier than usual on the way back today after sniffing at the pet store, but I also had to make some emergency u-turns (I need to be better about doing this more when there’s nothing to fear because she definitely knows it means there’s something we are avoiding) and jog away after seeing a few dogs, and we checked out one new area which usually makes her more vigilant, so I don’t know if it was those things or if it could be the dog smells.

 

[dan222]

@7an13l Sniffing is a good thing its how dogs learn information in the world dogs sniffing things is equivalent to us checking our phones and learning things

 

[7an13l]

@dan222 That’s why we do lots of sniffing on any walk! Thanks for the input

 

[julie3685]

@7an13l I think it depends on the day, in recent years mine have decided that it is exciting to even smell the tracks of a dog that has gone by recently. Once I was jogging with the dogs and they went into full chase mode - literally 2km later I saw the reason why- a woman walking a dog.

If you find she is too amped up from this then you may need to curtail how long she spends sniffing.

Some days we head out the door and they are just too crazy to do a walk so I turn it around and try again later.

 

[7an13l]

@julie3685 Yeah thank you for the input! She was at the vet yesterday and I’m wondering if she was going to be a bit high stress today as residual from that yesterday anyways. I definitely know what you mean!

 

[julie3685]

@7an13l Trigger stackup is definitely an issue with sensitive dogs like ours.

 

[7an13l]

@julie3685 100% - good to keep in mind!