Let’s face it, both cats & dogs have much better sense of smell than we humans. And you can use that to your advantage.

We are going to be trying out a second dog in a couple of weeks, and since I have zero experience with multi-dog households, I’ve been reading as much as possible.

And that’s when I stumbled across this very interesting piece of advice from “Managing a Multiple Dog Household“:

Here’s one thing you might try if you have one perpetrator and one victim.
Do you wear a particular cologne or hand lotion? Try applying your scent
to the victim for a week or two and see what happens. Dogs are VERY
scent-oriented. You smell like love, warmth, food, water, all the good
things in life. Making the victim dog smell like you might have the effect
of stopping aggression and building friendships. This works with cats,
too.

I have, in fact, used this principle myself. Both dogs & cats, for instance, identify each other via scent, not looks. And that’s why cats often throw a hissy fit when one of your animals come back from the vets: they smell of the evil vet place.

When the boys had dentals this year, Simba started attacking Gizmo when I brought them home. He was pretty serious about it, too. I grabbed some Rescue Remedy, put some on both, and they immediately settled down.

In fact, when Chester had his surgery recently, I hadn’t thought much about the evil vet smell. Until I read about how someone’s cats got very disturbed after their dog had surgery. And Chester had to stay overnight.

Although the boys are used to him going & coming from the vet without a problem, and were used to the same with Puss, I decided discretion is the better part of valor. I rubbed the boys with Rescue Remedy, and I rubbed Chester with it, too, when he came home (it’s good for animals recovering from surgery, anyway). We never had any problems. I don’t know if the Rescue Remedy made the difference, but it sure didn’t hurt.

I had never thought about using scent on victims, though. And that is a very interesting idea.

Technorati Tags: sense of smell, multi-dog households

Related posts: