To get the best from your hound and to ensure they are content, engage with their amazing sense of smell, advises trainer and author Zazie Todd

In her latest book, social psychologist, certified dog trainer and founder of the popular blog Companion Animal Psychology, Zazie Todd distills the latest canine science and shares recommendations from leading vets, researchers and trainers so that you can give your dog the happiest possible life.

From the seemingly noiseless electronics that may be upsetting your pup, to the fact that letting her sniff the breeze might be one of the best gifts you can give her, here is an extract from what Zazie has learned: canine behavior, but sometimes dogs don’t have a way to express it that is permissible to their owner. The solution includes making sure the dog does have something they can chew, and luckily there are plenty of chew toys to fill the void.

We often think of enrichment when it comes to zoo animals: watermelon being given to captive wolves to eat on a hot day, or trees and other climbing spaces being added to zoo enclosures. We can do this with our dogs too. Activities that stimulate our dogs’ senses and challenge them to solve problems are important for their happiness. One measure of successful enrichment is whether the animal chooses to interact with the item or not. Other ways of evaluating success would be quality-of-life measures or observations of the animal’s behaviour.

One way to think about enrichment is in terms of a dog’s senses. It’s important to note, though, that what is important to a dog is not the same as what is important to a human. A dog’s vision is 20/75 compared with our 20/20, meaning that what we see at 75 feet (23 metres), the dog can only see at 20 feet (6 metres). They see the world in yellows and blues, rather like a person with red-green colour blindness (the bright colours of dog toys are more for the benefit of humans than dogs).

A dog’s hearing range is broader than humans’. Whereas humans are said to hear a range from about 20 to 20,000 hertz, dogs hear much higher frequencies, from about 67 to 45,000 hertz. That’s the reason behind the design of those high-pitched dog whistles, some of which can be heard by dogs but not by humans. Incidentally, this means some highpitched whirrs or hums from electronic equipment in the house may be audible and possibly annoying to your dog; similarly, the flicker rate of some lighting or the artificial scents of some household products may affect dogs differently from humans too.

There are some suggestions that music (at least certain kinds) may be relaxing to dogs. A study of kenneled dogs found they slept more when classical music was played compared with heavy metal, music designed for dogs, or no music at all. The dogs shook more during heavy metal and vocalised less during classical music compared with no music. Since only a few tracks of each type of music were used, the results may not generalise to genres as a whole. Subsequent research by a different team found that shelter dogs were more relaxed when listening to classical music, but they also got used to it.

A dog’s most important sense is smell. Dogs don’t just have a nose. They also have something called a vomeronasal organ (VNO), which is tucked away in the upper palate, and the ability to suck molecules in and out and in again to increase their availability for detection. The VNO is not open to airflow from the nose; instead molecules must dissolve,