Dogs scenting abilities

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bunnyjumper
Posts: 27
Joined: Tue Feb 01, 2005 7:09 pm
Location: Ohio

Dogs scenting abilities

Post by bunnyjumper »

It seems that there is always a debate on trash running. Could there be a line that is more resistant than others? I did some research to see if this might hold true with some sort of documentation. First let me say, I read a lot of articles on how a dog smells scents. They are quite lengthy so I just pulled some highlights from some of them that I thought were interesting. All dogs have genetic factors to detect a specific scent, categorize it, and recall it to memory. This ability is a hereditary trait. Training plays an important part, but the trainer must be able to teach the dog to give an indication of the desired scent. The dog can all ready smell it. Dogs learn by experience, just as we do, and until a dog is trained to respond to the right combination of scents that mean game, he might behave as if he could smell nothing at all. A lot of other factors determine how good a dog will scent, which include: desire, heart, and physical abilities. On wether genitics could play a part in it, I found this, The gene pairs that make a breed true to type are " Homozygous". However, variable gene pairs, like those that control coat color, size, SCENTING ABILITY, etc. are heterozygous within the breed as a whole. Linebreeding only increases the homozygosity for that animals traits in thier pups. Pretty interesting stuff, the articles were a lot more in depth on how a dog scents and how well, its amazing what you can find on the internet. Any thoughts?

Bunny Runner
Posts: 479
Joined: Mon Aug 08, 2005 6:14 pm
Location: NC

Post by Bunny Runner »

Why don't you post some of those links? I think it would be great.
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