How Dogs Feel Smell: The Emotional Power of Odor in Training
Dogs don’t just smell the world, they feel it. Every scent they encounter tells a story, sparking emotional and behavioral responses that run far deeper than we often realize. Understanding how odor connects to emotion and memory in dogs helps us appreciate why scent based training is so powerful. The Neuroscience of Smell: Why Odor Hits Different In both humans and dogs, the olfactory bulb, the part of the brain that processes scent, has direct connections to the amygdala (which regulates emotion) and the hippocampus (which handles memory). This means scent bypasses the rational parts of the brain and goes straight to emotional and memory centers. That’s why smells can instantly transport us back to a moment or feeling. It's also why dogs react so strongly to familiar scents. Dogs’ olfactory systems are on another level. Their olfactory epithelium contains up to 300 million scent receptors (compared to our 6 million). The area of their brain dedicated to analyzing scent is about 4...
