Canine Olfactory-Shepherd

Canine olfactory perception has not been studied amid many researchers, but is assumed to play a role in both dog breed and experience. Tacher, Robin, Rooney, Bradshaw, Adamkiewicz, and Jezierski conducted studies on breed differences in scent detection capabilities, but did not include an adequate amount of evidence. Researchers Nathaniel Hall, Kelsey Glenn, David Smith, and Clive Wynne then came along to study dog breeds’ olfactory discrimination performance. Pugs, German shepherds, and greyhounds were selected for their study. Pugs were selected because they are a brachycephalic toy breed, which makes them a poor candidate due to their rotating olfactory lobe and crowded ethmoturbinate bones. German shepherds were selected because of their popularity in scent detection …show more content…
One German shepherd, nine greyhounds, and one pug were dropped from the acquisition study due to motivation failure. The study continued with dilution training, which tested the dog’s performance when the odorant was diluted. All of the dogs from acquisition training participated in dilution training. The full strength odorant was one milliliter of the anise extract, the 10% odorant was made from one milliliter of anise extract and nine milliliters of mineral oil, and the 1% odorant was made from one milliliter of the 10% odorant and nine milliliters of mineral oil. The same procedure was used as in the acquisition training with the buckets. The dogs received two alert training sessions with the full dilution, forty five discrimination trials (fifteen trials per dilution), and eight control trials. The 100%, 10%, and 1% odorants were carefully presented to ensure that one dilution occurred with at least one other one. Double-blind and correction trials were conducted as they were in acquisition trials. The last training in this study was a visual discrimination