When I’m doing training walks with dogs, part of that training session is allowing the dog to interact and sniff their environment.

Often people passing comment “it looks like that dog is taking you for a walk and sniff”. I’ve even had someone comment that I “should be dictating to the dog and not allowing them to randomly sniff”.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to train your dog to ‘walk on’ and ‘leave’ so that you can ask them to keep walking when you need to.

However in training, environment sniffing is calming for the dog and is used as a distraction technique. So I’m happy to have a dog I’m training take time to sniff.

When out walking, I’m a firm believer that it’s the dog’s walk not mine. If they want to investigate, have a sniff and a pee, and they’re not in danger or harming anything - then so be it.

As humans we spend a lot of time on social media. Think about the environment as your dogs social media time. They’re checking out who has been where, what they’ve been eating, if there is a new dog/animal in the neighbourhood, and much more.