Although how its food smells determines whether or not a cat will eat it, the feline nose is a for more versatile organ of smell than simply o food-identifier. Indeed, it plays a crucial role in feline relationships - both sexual and social - and if a cat’s sense of smell is impaired for any reason, it may start to behave in a most unfeline way. (more…)
As well as controlling the essential functions of eating, drinking and breeding, in many respects the feline sense of smell can be said to be the engine that keeps cat society running smoothly, defining as it does the individual cat’s place within its feline (or feline—human) community, its relationship with other cats (or, in the case of a human household, surrogate cats) and the boundaries of its personal territory. (more…)
Teaching the retrieve to a dog who isn’t retrieve-minded can be a long and painful process; painful for the owner, I might add, not for the dog. So I advise you that, unless your dog is a natural retriever or you specifically want him to fetch things for you, forget this exercise and find something else your dog’s good at. Remember, all these extra things you are teaching your pet should be pleasurable both to you and him and if you find that your dog isn’t enjoying the exercises, forget it. If you’ve played with your dog from being a young puppy then the chances are that he will retrieve. Throw him an old sock or a pair of knotted tights and give him a command to fetch. (more…)
The cat’s sense of smell is highly developed but does not seem to play a very important role in hunting, although it must help in locating prey. It is used from the moment of birth, whereas the eyes do not open until about the eighth day, and even then are not properly operational. It is scent, not sight, that guides a kitten to its mother’s nipples for its first meal, and scent that helps it to locate its mother if it wanders away from her.
As the cat gets older, it uses scent to mark its own territory and to recognize that of others, to identify friends and strangers, to exchange a whole vocabulary of signals about sexual state and readiness, and to find and identify all kinds of objects. (more…)
