Why Letting Your Dog Sniff Matters: 8 Scent Activities to Build Safety, Confidence, and Joy

Sniffing Changes Everything

Letting your dog sniff is not a luxury. It is a vital part of how they understand the world and how they begin to feel safe within it.

When a dog explores through scent, they are not avoiding something more important. They are processing. They are gathering information, mapping their environment, and making sense of what is happening around them.

Scent based activities are not a replacement for training, but they often support learning in deeper and more meaningful ways. They help reduce overwhelm, increase confidence, and create moments of genuine choice. They give dogs agency, and that changes everything.

In this blog, we will explore how everyday scent activities like foraging, sniffing, and sensory games, can support your dog’s behaviour, confidence, and wellbeing. You will find simple, accessible scent activities you can offer your dog at home or outside. If you would like to explore this further, you will also find a link to the Confident Canine Hub, where you can learn more about ACE Free Work, scent games, and supporting your dog’s experience through smell.

The Science of Sniffing

Dogs are olfactory specialists. Their sense of smell is their dominant way of interpreting the world, far more so than vision or sound.

Their olfactory bulb is roughly 40 times larger (relative to brain size) than in humans (Horowitz, 2016).

Dogs are estimated to have between 125 million and over 300 million scent receptors, depending on breed and individual anatomy. That is tens of times more than the 5 to 6 million found in humans.

Dogs process scent through both orthonasal olfaction (active sniffing) and retronasal olfaction (odour molecules detected through the back of the mouth or nose during breathing or eating).

This dual processing gives dogs the ability to:

Detect and track specific odours
Map environments through scent
Create strong associations and emotional memories through smell

Dogs experience the world through scent. It’s how they gather information, make decisions, and assess what feels safe. Smell isn’t just sensory, it’s central to how dogs interpret and respond to their environment.

What Sniffing Does to the Brain

Sniffing isn’t just something dogs do, it’s a full-body experience. It activates sensory systems, supports brain processes involved in attention and recovery, and helps dogs feel safe enough to explore, learn, and connect.

Active sniffing increases airflow through the nose and sharpens olfactory perception, supporting better discrimination, memory encoding, and environmental awareness (Mainland and Sobel, 2006). Research also suggests that sniffing supports emotional wellbeing: dogs who participated in scent-based activities showed more optimistic judgement bias in cognitive tests, indicating a more positive affective state (Duranton & Horowitz, 2019).

Sniffing may also help dogs regulate their emotions. When a dog sniffs, it creates a natural pattern of breathing through the nose. This kind of breathing has been shown to affect how the brain works, especially in areas linked to memory, attention, and emotions. Because of this, sniffing can support focus and emotional recovery. It’s especially helpful for dogs who are feeling overwhelmed or finding it hard to settle after stress.

Why Scent Activities Support Behaviour

Most behaviour concerns are rooted in emotion. Fear, frustration, confusion, and uncertainty can all contribute to behaviours that are challenging to live with.

Learning can only begin when a dog feels safe. Scent activities help create that sense of safety by supporting emotional regulation and predictability. They give dogs the opportunity to:

Choose how and when to engage
Build familiarity through scent mapping and memory
Support nervous system regulation through sensory input
Fulfil natural needs for exploration, investigation, and foraging

Many scent-based activities also activate the SEEKING system (Panksepp, 1998), a deep emotional system in the brain that drives exploration, motivation, and engagement. This makes them especially effective for building confidence and reducing emotional tension. These kinds of experiences are increasingly recognised as essential to good welfare.

8 Everyday Scent Games and Enrichment Ideas for Dogs

These scent-based activities are simple to introduce, meaningful for your dog, and adaptable to their individual needs. They can be offered as standalone games or blended into Free Work, decompression walks, or daily routines.

Introduce new activities slowly and at your dog’s pace. These games are not meant to be difficult or frustrating, they are designed to be enriching and rewarding. The aim is to support emotional safety, not to test or challenge. Let your dog show you what works for them, and adjust as needed.

Always ensure that the environment, materials, and setup are safe for your dog. Supervision matters, especially when using novel or natural items. What feels enriching for one dog may feel overwhelming or unsafe for another, so let the individual dog guide you.

1. ACE Free Work

ACE Free Work offers a calm, sensory-rich environment that supports autonomy, regulation, and choice. Dogs are invited to explore different textures, scents, and objects at their own pace, without prompts, expectations, or cues.

This isn’t about performance. It’s about rewarding experiences.

Free Work enables dogs to engage with their surroundings in ways that feel safe and meaningful to them. Over time, this kind of exploratory freedom can reveal emotional preferences, highlight subtle sensitivities, and strengthen trust between guardian and dog.

Why it helps:
Free Work promotes decompression, sensory integration, and emotional safety. It supports behavioural observations without pressure and creates space for the dog to feel understood, rather than assessed (Fisher, 2018).

2. Sensory Foraging Tray

Fill a shallow box or tray with safe, interesting textures like scrunched paper, fabric, or dry natural materials. Tuck treats among the layers and invite your dog to explore freely. There is no right or wrong way, just observation, investigation, and choice.

Why it helps:

This activity taps into the dog’s natural motivation to forage and explore. It provides a rewarding sensory experience that supports regulation, builds confidence, and encourages decision-making.

3. Slow Scent Walk

Take your next walk at your dog’s pace. Stop when they stop. Follow where their nose takes you, even if it is only a few steps. Prioritise exploration over distance.

Why it helps:
Scent walks reduce pressure and increase autonomy. They help dogs decompress, investigate their environment, and regulate through active sniffing. This can be especially useful after a stressful event or overstimulation.

4. Dig-Safe Exploration Box

Fill a box, sandpit, or similar container with shredded paper, sand, or soil. Bury a few treats or scent items and invite your dog to dig them out. You can use toys or safe natural items depending on your dog’s preferences.

Why it helps:
This activity enables dogs to express natural digging and searching behaviour. It offers mental and physical enrichment and can help redirect energy in a safe, rewarding way.

5. Curiosity Box

Place one or more safe, unfamiliar items inside a shallow box or bag. You might include things collected on a walk, as long as they are clean, safe, non-toxic, and free from strong scent residues. Avoid anything that could splinter or be swallowed.

Invite your dog to approach and investigate in their own time.

If your dog feels comfortable, you can sit nearby and observe quietly. For some dogs, your relaxed presence can help them feel more secure exploring something new.

Why it helps:
This activity introduces novelty in a calm, low-pressure way. Multiple items offer choice, and the opportunity to observe which ones your dog engages with can reveal useful emotional and sensory preferences. It supports resilience and natural investigation.

6. Search Game

Hide a treat or scented item under a towel. Let your dog watch you do it, then step back and invite them to search. Keep the setup simple and rewarding.

Why it helps:
These short games build frustration tolerance and success through active problem-solving. Always introduce slowly and avoid setting difficulty too high.

7. Scent Trail

While your dog is looking away, scatter a winding trail of treats. Then invite them to follow the path using their nose. This encourages tracking and curiosity.

Why it helps:
Scent trails promote focused sniffing, natural problem-solving, and joyful discovery. They are ideal for dogs who benefit from low-pressure engagement.

8. Scent Mapping Adventure

On walks or in a new outdoor area, give your dog time to pause, sniff, and map their environment. Rather than cueing or leading, let their nose guide you.

Why it helps:
This supports emotional safety through predictability and environmental familiarity. Over time, scent mapping can help dogs build confidence in unfamiliar or previously difficult places.

What Changes When Dogs Get to Sniff

When dogs are regularly given opportunities to explore the world through scent, we often see real and meaningful shifts in how they feel and behave:

Less scanning or hypervigilance
More curiosity and willingness to explore
Faster recovery after arousal or overwhelm
A deeper, more connected relationship with their guardian
More confidence, independence, and optimism

These changes aren’t about obedience or compliance. They’re signs that your dog feels safer in their body, more settled in their surroundings, and more able to engage with the world around them.

This isn’t about clever technique, it’s about giving dogs the emotional conditions they need to feel supported, secure, and ready to learn.

Scent Is Safety

Sniffing isn’t a luxury, it’s emotional support. It gives them time to settle, space to process, and the freedom to make choices that help them feel secure.

Scent activities do not replace training. They build the emotional foundation that makes learning possible. They enable changes to unfold gradually. Not because the dog was corrected, but because the dog feels secure.

Letting your dog sniff is not a luxury. It is a way of supporting who they are.

Explore What Scent Can Really Do

If this blog left you feeling seen or curious about what’s possible, there’s more waiting for you inside the Confident Canine Hub.

You’ll find thoughtful guidance on using scent as part of your dog’s emotional support. That might mean learning how to set up meaningful Free Work, creating sensory activities that truly meet your dog’s needs, or understanding how scent fits into decompression, recovery, and safety.

It’s not about doing more, it’s about noticing more. Supporting your dog in a way that feels good for both of you.