Your dog can tell exact time of day by just smelling you, says dog psychologist

Their ability to track time through the events of the day resembles ancient time tracking via environmental cues.

PUBLISHED 3 HOURS AGO

(L) Dog with books and alarm clock, (R) Man with dog smelling him. (Representative Cover Image Source: Getty Images | (L)Wavetop, (R) Westend61)

Dogs are smarter than you think. They might not be able to turn their wrists for a quick glance at the watch, but they have a special ability that precedes conventional time tracking. Writer Michaeleen Doucleff shared a unique hypothesis about how dogs can smell time. She took the instance of her husband’s childhood dog, Donut, a Hound mix, to explain her exceptional punctuality when the school bus arrived. She also backed her theory with insights from a dog psychologist. The heartwarming story of Donut serves as anecdotal evidence for how dogs might use their olfactory senses to never miss a beat during the day.

Little bald boy sitting at home and playing with pet. (Representative Image Source: Getty Images| Photo by Fat Camera)

"She was a stray that came to our house when I was about 4," recounted Matt, her husband. Donut was a pup with big brown ears and giant black and white spots on her flanks, as reported by NPR. Back in elementary school, Matt remembers how Donut never missed greeting him and his brother as they returned from school in the afternoon. "She was always punctual. Never early and never late." Alexandra Horowitz, a psychologist studying dog cognition at Columbia University and Barnard College, affirmed that dogs can smell time. Their ability to track time through the events of the day resembles ancient time tracking via environmental cues.

Dog sleeping on a dog bed (Image Source: Pexels | Christian Domingues)

The biological clock, the intensity of light outside, and the sun’s angle are some of the ways all beings on the planet track time. But that’s not all. "Dogs are living in basically an olfactory world, and I think they are able to track time with smells,” said Horowitz. Dogs have up to 300 million olfactory receptors in comparison to the 5 million in humans, per Medical Detection Dogs. Hence, it’s no surprise. Humans leave behind a particular smell that pups can distinguish among the many scents lingering in the environment. For Donut, Matt, and his brother—two prepubescent boys—were enough to train her olfactory senses. From the stink of their dirty socks to the scent of their shampoo, the dog knew what her owners smelled like.

Even after they left, their scents lingered, bathing Donut in the signature smell as she napped on the rug. However, the scents fade over time. Now, Donut used the diminishment of the scents to predict when the school bus would arrive to drop off Matt. "We have to imagine that things we render as visual experiences, dogs might render in olfaction. So they might experience spaces, recognize things, and have memories in smell,” explained Horowitz. While this ability in dogs is widely believed, it still lacks the support of scientific evidence.

Carol Erickson, an animal advocate at the Pennsylvania SPCA, told CBS Philadelphia (@cbsphilly) about the olfactory superiority of dogs, emphasizing the importance of routine in their lives. “A routine for a dog is telling time. Inconsistent routines can lead to anxiety and undesirable behaviors like excessive barking and chewing.” She advised that pet owners should always schedule playtime, mealtimes, sleep time, and bathroom breaks to keep their pups in the loop.