Those of us who have decided to share our home with a dog best friend know that there are many curious things that dogs do. One of them is, without a doubt, sniffing each other's asses or showing us their tails as normal. If you have already observed your furry friend sniffing another dog's anus during his walks, you are probably wondering why dogs sniff their tails and if it would be this a way to greet each other.
On our site we want you to get to know your dog's body language better, which will help you improve your communication with him. For this reason, in this article we will detail the reason for this behavior and others that are related, do not miss it, you will discover many things about dogs that you probably do not know!
Why do dogs smell each other?
To understand why dogs sniff each other, you first need to keep in mind that our best friends express themselves differently, mostly using body language to communicate with other dogs, with their guardians and also with their environment. So, if you are looking to improve communication with your furry friend, we advise you to learn to interpret the dog's postures and their meanings, their facial expressions and their attitudes on a day-to-day basis, since through them your dog will transmit histo you. mood and perceptions about your routine and environment.
Many behaviors that seem strange to us in our dogs, are totally natural and are part of the social behavior that guides the way they dogs interact with each other. Although this attitude may seem somewhat peculiar to us, dogs sniff each other to greeting, making themselves known and exchanging information about their personality and mood with others individuals.
Our astonishment or bewilderment, in fact, occurs because we have adopted different codes in our social life than those that guide canine social behavior. For this reason, we will never see two dogs shaking hands when they meet or hugging each other to exchange affection, since their language and communication do not include this type of greeting or demonstration of cordiality.
On the other hand, the attitude of sniffing another dog's behind and offering its tail so that the other can also sniff it, is perfectly normal for dogs, since they use their sense of smell on this occasion to gather information about the other individual that allows them to meet and interact with them.
Why do dogs sniff their anuses?
Now, to explain exactly why dogs sniff their tails, we need to remind you that furry dogs' sense of smell is much more developed than ours. Therefore, they are able to perceive odors that go completely unnoticed, such as hormones and non-volatile chemical substances produced and secreted by the glands of the body of other individuals, such as dogs, cats and also humans.
When two or more dogs meet and voluntarily decide to raise their tails and sniff each other's anus, they carry out a key step in the social behavior of dogs, as this means thatthey interact positively and have decided to exchange their "personal data" to get to know each other and establish a bond of cordiality.
If your furry sniffs other dogs' butts and is confident at the time of this interaction, this is usually a very good sign that your dog has been properly socialized and has learned to interact positively with other individuals and with their environment. When a dog does not experience an adequate socialization process, he can be fearful when meeting other dogs, which does not allow him to enjoy a he althy social life.
Then, once again we remind you that socialization is a key aspect of the education of your best friend that, in addition to teaching interacting positively with individuals and stimuli in their environment also helps prevent most common behavior problems in dogs.
But why do dogs sniff each other's tails to get to know each other and interact?
When dogs sniff each other's anus, they establish a kind of "chemical communication" that allows them to collect data about their age, gender, immune status, mood, dietand even about your genetic inheritance. This is possible because dogs have anal or perianal glands that concentrate all their chemical information through the production of certain secretions that reveal the identity of each dog. For this reason, it is common to hear that the "odor signature" of a dog is found in its anus.
Additionally, dogs also possess an auxiliary olfactory system which is found in dogs.
By sniffing each other near the anal glands, two or more dogs can interact chemically, making themselves known and, at the same time, knowing the personality and routine of their interlocutor(s) through of their smells. Thus, the anal glands and smell play a key role in communication and social behavior of dogs, so we should not reprimand or punish our best friends for sniffing another dog's anus or flashing their butt to people as an invitation to interaction.
It is also interesting to mention that, in addition to a powerful sense of smell, dogs have a superb olfactory memory, being able to remember the characteristic odors of other dogs, people and animals for a long period of time. Therefore, they can interact normally and intimately when they meet up with other dogs and people they know, even when years have passed without seeing each other.
