Dear Human, we want you to know what makes us special!
We have an extraordinary sense smell, infact our 'control centre for smell' in our brain is 40 times larger than yours. My friend, the Dachshund's nose has 125million scent receptors compared to 5 million in your nose. Hence why strong scents and artificial fragrances should be avoided to protect our individual scent identity, an often overlooked part of dog welfare.
Each one of us has his/her own scent identity, which is critical for our own self-identification and for interaction/ communication with fellow dogs. We 'SEE' the world through our noses, and can tell how our dog friend is feeling, what they have eaten, whom they have seen, where they have been and we can also recognise each other even after years apart - just from smell. Washing or Spraying us with deodorises, or colognes (especially those designed for dogs) disorientates and robs us of our sense of smell (think about when you were trapped in an elevator with a person who sprayed a little too much perfume/cologne).