When it comes to taking our dogs for a walk, most of us envision the usual routine: leash, collar, the essential poo bags and maybe a few treats for training. But have you ever planned foraging session your dog as a regular activity on a walk? Dogs navigate their surroundings using their remarkable noses and highly developed sense of smell, which far surpasses our own capabilities. Adding some targeted sniffing opportunities can bring a whole new level of enrichment and engagement to your dog's daily outing. Let's dive into the 9 surprising benefits of scatter feeding.
1. It makes your dog more optimistic!
Scatter feeding or foraging is a form of nosework, which is defined as an activity in which dogs use their noses to find something hidden. In a scientific study by Dr. Charlotte Duranton (Ethodog) and Dr. Alexandra Horowitz (Barnard College) that tested the effect of an olfaction-based activity on pet dogs’ emotional states, results showed that that dogs who participate in nose work have increased optimism compared to dogs that took part in heelwork instead.

2. Calms the nervous system
By dogs more opportunities to sniff in general , studies have shown that their heart rates decrease, blood pressure drop and dopamine levels rise (more about that below) (Budzinski and Budzinski, 2019).
3. Self-Rewarding Enrichment
Sniffing, whether for treats or investigation of the environment, triggers the activation of the Seeking System in the brain, which is also responsible for the release of the neurotransmitter Dopamine. Dopamine boosts our attention, motivation, and feelings of reward, and is linked to improved memory. Dopamine produces pleasurable sensations.
The Seeking System was described by Jaak Panskepp in Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998 as:
This emotional system is a coherently operating neuronal network that promotes a certain class of survival abilities. This system makes animals intensely interested in exploring their world and leads them to become excited when they are about to get what they desire. It eventually allows animals to find and eagerly anticipate the things they need for survival, including, of course, food, water, warmth, and their ultimate evolutionary survival need, sex. In other words, when fully aroused, it helps fill the mind with interest and motivates organisms to move their bodies effortlessly in search of the things they need, crave, and desire. In humans, this may be one of the main brain systems that generate and sustain curiosity, even for intellectual pursuits. This system is obviously quite efficient at facilitating learning, especially mastering information about where material resources are situated and the best way to obtain them. It also helps assure that our bodies will work in smoothly patterned and effective ways in such quests.
In other words, the mere activity of sniffing is enjoyable and self-rewarding for your dog, nature's way of ensuring that dogs will willingly seek to engage in foraging to preserve their species - to find food, water, avoid dangers, and potential mates.
4. Reduces Anxiety
Allowing your dog to sniff can make them feel good, as it serves as a form of self-soothing that can help reduce anxiety. The dopamine D1 and D2 receptors play a crucial role in regulating anxiety, meaning that the act of sniffing can effectively alleviate a dog's anxiety or discomfort. More about sniffing and anxious dogs below.
5. Mental Workout
Dogs have a natural instinct to sniff, which is rooted in their past as hunters and foragers who rely heavily on their sense of smell. By letting your dog sniff during walks, you are not only letting him explore but also giving him important mental stimulation.
Encouraging your dog to sniff while walking can enhance his cognitive abilities and problem-solving skills.
Dogs have around 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses, which is significantly more than the approximately six million found in humans. Additionally, a dog's brain area responsible for processing smells is about 40 times larger than ours. Dogs also exhibit neophilia, a trait that draws them to fresh and intriguing scents.
When your dog sniffs, he engages a significant portion of his brain to process the surrounding scents.
This mental stimulation is as crucial as physical activity for your dog, and for some breeds even more so.
Certain scent hounds are specifically bred for their outstanding sense of smell, and are employed by various industries to seek out what even the most developed man-made machines cannot identify. Maybe you bumped into a few working dogs at the airport performing a drug and food search (Australian customs are serious business), but other jobs include detecting leaks in pipes underground! Such dogs really need regular scent-related tasks to stay mentally stimulated.

Did you know?
Dogs present a phenomenon referred to as sniffing lateralisation. What does that mean? Dogs have a strong right nostril bias as it is the nostril through which they first start sniffing. Then, if the smell turns out to be a familiar or non-aversive odour such as treats, they shift to using the left nostril. However, if the stimuli turn out to be novel, threatening, or arousing, such as adrenaline, the dog continues to use only the right nostril.
6. Scatter Feeding to Handle Distractions
If you have an easily distracted dog (nervous or just very reactive), scattering treats in different areas along your walking route, you encourage your dog to focus on the task at hand, helping them practice calm and mindfulness even in the presence of distractions like other dogs, loud noises, or unfamiliar surroundings. This is a great activity if your dog is typically excited about everything on a walk. Read below on how to structure the game.
7. Gives Nervous Dogs a Break on a Stimulating Walk
Conversely, foraging games will also aid your nervous dog. You will find that by offering a routine with a regular, consistent place for a scavenger game will help your dog to settle and find calm. Dogs look for patterns in their environment - this calming, positive and predictable event at the end of a walk can help them to regulate themselves after a stimulating walk (which for some dogs could be that you walked past some people or met other dogs). The focused task helps them to cancel out their surroundings (be sure to play this in a relatively low-stimulating environment). This method can offer anxious dogs a necessary respite and contribute to gradually boosting their confidence as they learn that they can cope and not react to every stimuli. In other words, it allows your dog to breathe.
8. Environmental Conditioning and Confidence Building
Through scatter feeding, dogs get to navigate and explore different environments while associating them with positive experiences (finding treats). This conditioning not only builds their confidence in unfamiliar settings but also strengthens their bond with you as their trusted companion. Of course, make sure the environment is safe and free from avoidable known triggers.
As your dog finds their confidence, you can add new places to play the game but still stick to a pattern they can recognise.
For instance: show your dog the treats and use any cue you'd like to stick to such as "Do you want to seek?", ask for sit and stay, scatter your treats and use your release cue to allow your dog to start the activity (such as 'ok', 'free' or specifically 'seek/find the treat'). Predictability is essential for nervous dogs, so find a pattern even if you change the location in which you play the game.
Below is an example of foraging around an old fountain in a calmer section of a large park.
9. Overall Well-being and Joy
By incorporating a foraging activity into your dog's walking routine, you are enhancing their mental and physical well-being, fostering a deep sense of joy and contentment in their daily activities. Our modern society's captive dogs are often alone and confined in a limited space during the daytime and thus cannot engage in natural behaviours essential for their welfare, such as social interaction and foraging activity. It is reported that free-ranging dogs forage alone most of the time, using olfaction and spent at least 10 to 22% of their active time doing so. Given their living arrangements, our pet dogs often have little opportunity to forage or explore their environment using olfaction if we don't make up time and situations for them. As we've just seen above, the combined benefits of reduced stress and stimulation of the Seeking System, make sniffing for treats a delightful, stress-reducing, and motivating endeavour.
Next time you gear up for a walk with dog, consider bringing some pate-style spreadable treats to smear on tree trunks and walls, and dry treats to scatter among the leaves and roots of trees.
Remember, it's the little things we do that make the most significant impact on our dogs' lives. If your dog is home for long periods of time, consider creating indoor sniffing activities. Our Stuff-It! Enrichment Cube is an ideal enrichment toy that can be filled with absolutely anything you like.
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