A dog's nose knows when the time is right - Dr. Marty Becker

Blog

A dog’s nose knows when the time is right

Friday, Feb 20th, 2015 | By Dr. Marty Becker

It’Dog Noses no secret that dogs have a great sense of smell, but do you know all the strange ways humans use a dog’s nose?

You probably know we train dogs to sniff out drugs and explosives, and I bet that many of you know some dogs can even smell cancer.

Here’s one you probably didn’t know: We use scent dogs to determine when cows are in heat!  Not wasting time guessing when she’s ready can save a lot of money when it comes time to artificially inseminate a cow.  A bull could tell when the cow is fertile, but his main contribution is usually delivered to the scene, frozen.

Instead, scent dogs have been trained to identify the best time for a cow to get pregnant — even though the dog couldn’t care less!