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Curious about what makes dogs so incredibly smart.
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Well, join us as we chat with Jennifer S Holland, new York Times bestselling author and acclaimed journalist.
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Her latest book, dog Smart Life-Changing Lessons in Canine Intelligence, explores the surprising ways that our furry friends use their intelligence to connect with us and to thrive and survive.
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In this episode, you'll discover how dogs think, learn and why they're truly more than just our best friends.
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Stay tuned You're listening to Starlight Pet Talk, a podcast for pet parents who want the best pet care advice from cat experts, dog trainers, veterinarians and other top pet professionals who will help you live your very best life with your pets.
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Welcome to the show.
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I'm your host, amy Castro, and today I am delighted to have Jennifer S Holland with us.
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Jennifer is a distinguished journalist, new York Times bestselling author, and she's known for her insightful work with National Geographic and other, like primo, top publications, so I'm very honored to have her here today.
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Her latest book, though, is right up my alley, and I'm so glad to be able to share some information about it with all of you.
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It's called Dog Smart Life-Changing Lessons in Canine Intelligence, and the book offers a, I think, completely compelling exploration into the incredible way our dogs understand and interact with the world that they live in.
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In Dog Smart, jennifer combines and I was just telling her this before we started the recording is that I love her combination of lots of research and facts that back up what she says and, for people who love to have that evidence, but just some fantastic stories in the book that are just going to drag you in that basically will reveal the many, many ways that our dogs are intelligent beyond what I think anybody listening right at the second can possibly imagine.
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So we're going to discuss the fascinating insights she's uncovered about how dogs think, how they learn and how they connect with their human companions, and so I'm so excited to dive in and hear more about Jennifer's experience and findings.
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So let's go ahead and get started.
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Jennifer, welcome to the show.
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Thank you.
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That was very, very kind and generous intro.
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I appreciate that.
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Hey, it's well-deserved.
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You're like a superstar as far as I'm concerned.
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I need a cape.
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Yeah, but you're a real person too.
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But I so appreciate having written a book that is nowhere near as in-depth or evidentiary.
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Is the time that you put into, you know, visiting with researchers, visiting with regular people to bring those stories, and I think people are just going to love it.
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What motivated you to work that hard to put this book together?
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You know what was your inspiration?
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To really better understand and to share with us canine intelligence.
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You know, a lot of my writing, especially for National Geographic, has been sort of out in the wild and you know the animals that we think of as living very apart from us, but one of my favorite animals has always been dogs.
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I've grown up with all kinds of pets, but dogs being one that have been ever present.
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And you know, I just I started thinking about we joke around about what a dumb dog or.
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You know, we think about our dogs, as you know, if they respond to our commands, then that's a really smart dog.
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And I thought you know, isn't there?
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There's got to be more to that.
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It can't just be that this is a different species from us and they have their own way of existing in the world.
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And let's explore.
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You know, what does intelligence mean if you are not a human being?
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And and trying to give them credit for all the natural ways that they are particularly smart.
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I mean that's such a huge point.
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I see it all the time as somebody that adopts out a lot of pets, and people do make these judgments and I'm thinking what are they not seeing?
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Or what are they seeing that I didn't see?
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And it so much has to do with perspective.
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It's kind of like you know, just an idea that came to my head just as you were saying.
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That is, you know, it's kind of like the difference between somebody who might be great with their hands and they can build beautiful furniture and somebody else who might be great with math and somebody else who might be great at problem solving.
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It's using those different levels of skills, and the problem is with our dogs is that we try to take whatever we decide is intelligence like maybe it's the math thing and we think, okay, you know, they must not be very bright because they can't do this one thing that I use to define intelligence, and I'm so glad that this book will open people up to the many, many other levels of intelligence and ways that they demonstrate their intelligence that you may not even be aware of and it's happening every single day.
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Yeah, and I think you know the idea of multiple intelligences really does come out of human psychology and the idea that we're we're missing a lot of skill and just amazing capability out there.
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If we are narrow in our definition of intelligence, and especially with children, you know, being broader with that definition can open up lots of opportunities for perfectly intelligent kids that just have a different kind of smarts and need to apply that in their lives.
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Yeah, that's such a good point.
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So what were some of the most surprising findings?
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Like I know, I was obsessed with all of the stuff about dogs' noses and how those work, because I think people sometimes don't like what dogs do with their, like the butt sniffing and things like that.
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You know people are always trying to stop them from using their primary tool for exploring the world.
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But what were your big surprises?
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What were your big surprises?
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Definitely the, you know.
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I knew their noses were amazing, but I think that getting into that a little bit more, it did surprise me just how incredibly different their world is.
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As nose smart, you know, nose intelligent, nose, using animals and just trying to get a sense of what that looks like and to quantify that and that, you know, scientists say they we may not even have the tools yet the technologies to really define just how sensitive the nose is for the dog.
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But also I was surprised by the fact that you know there are probably close to a billion dogs on Earth and the vast majority of those animals are not the dogs that we think of.
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These aren't the pets living in our living rooms and on our couches.
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These are the dogs living at the edges of human society around the world.
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I think the statistic was something like 85% are free roaming animals and each individual dog might not be thriving, but if you think as a species, they're thriving, obviously just by their numbers and the fact that they live everywhere that humans live and that they have adapted to this niche.
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There's an incredible amount of adaptive intelligence underlying all of what dogs do, whether they live at home or live out in so-called wild.
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So that was kind of a neat thing to rethink and to kind of give them credit for.
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Right, yeah, because we think about dogs as being so.
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You know the extremes of how dogs live.
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When you think about the dogs that basically spend their entire lives, generations, on the streets with very little human taking an active role in their care, and then the pampered pets whose feet have never touched concrete or grass because they get carried around or ridden around in a stroller and it's like, hmm, that is such a huge diverse difference between those dogs.
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So can you give people for people who have not read the book kind of an idea of the ranges, like the nose being one thing?
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I mean, I think we kind of know dogs have better eyesight.
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I was fascinated about the hearing, the example that was in the book about the.
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You know a piano having 88 keys and dogs could hear.
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I don't know if it was 25 or 50, but it was like a lot more keys that we can't even like beyond the range of human hearing, which made me wonder like is that why my dogs bark all the time when there's not a darn thing happening?
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Because they're hearing something happening two miles away.
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Yeah, I think that's exactly it is is we don't really fully grasp what that world is like for their senses and I think all of their senses are part of this book, because it's just fascinating to look at those and really think about what that means for their experience of the world.
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So olfactory intelligence is a big part of the book, but I also wanted to consider, as I mentioned, adaptive intelligence is kind of the broader underlying theme.
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But I considered their emotional intelligence, I considered their social, huge social intelligence, particularly their ability to communicate in really subtle and detailed ways that we often misread or don't try to read properly.
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You know the fact that dogs can convey what they need and want in ways that we barely notice.
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But if you start to focus on the body language and the changes in the kind of bark and where the tail, the way the tail is wagging, just so many different things come together to send a message that we often miss because we're very focused on teaching them our language rather than kind of learning their language, and so that's sort of another aspect of intelligence I talk about kind of how they learn what we know about that aspect of their smarts.
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So it's really I try to get around all of the different ideas of what makes a dog a dog and how different kinds of intelligences have created this animal that we know and love so much.
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Yeah, I think that adaptive piece is so subtle that people can be missing that.
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Is there a particular story related to that that you would want to share?
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Yeah, I think I mean one really.
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I think really interesting ways that dogs have adapted is, I mean genetically, they have changed over time in order to improve, in a way, their relationship with us and to get more out of us, I mean frankly.
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And so scientists are able to really look at how that happened over the course of domestication and the different ways that dogs made choices, you know, to tolerate humans.
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I mean, that was sort of their first step toward being what they are today, which is, you know, as I said, very successful species.
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And that tolerance of humans is very different than anything you would see in wolves, for example.
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Even if wolves are raised by humans and cared for and tended to, they still, you know, are wary of humans, they still are going to attack and, you know, maim a human if they don't recognize the human.
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And dogs are just adapted over time to look to us for help, to, you know, to take advantage of all the things we have to offer, and that's kind of the key in my mind, to all of their success.
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So, as far as dog intelligence, you know, the first thing that came to mind when I saw the title of the book is well, first of all, it got me thinking a little broader.
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But when people think about dog intelligence, I think oftentimes it's this idea of there are smart dogs and there are not smart dogs, and there's listicles out there that basically rank you know the dumbest dogs and you know top 10 dumbest dogs, top 10 smartest dogs.
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Did you find breed correlation in your research or is it dependent on what intelligence you're focusing on, what type of intelligence?
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I mean, I think breed is really.
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It's important in that you know if you have a line of dogs that have similar genetics, you're going to have tendencies in certain directions, so you're going to have you know.
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In general, I think it's very fair to say Border Collies are very smart in certain ways.
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They're very attentive, they want to get it right.
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You know they're going to keep trying.
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They're very focused on their human and realizing the importance of you know sort of that, that connection.
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They are the ones that you always hear about learning all kinds of words for all kinds of items.
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So I think there is truth in that.
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But my shtick is sort of breed is is a piece of it, but the dogs are individuals, always of course, and that if you give dogs opportunities outside of what you think of as their normal intelligence realm or their normal skills, you sometimes find that, wow, I never would have thought that this breed would ever be.
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You know good at that.
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And one case is you know pugs as sniffer dogs.
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There was a study comparing German shepherds and pugs in sniffer tasks and you know they certainly expected that the German shepherds would just, you know, beat them out of the park and the pugs were so committed and so curious and interested and wanted to do this task, and they actually did better at the sniffer tasks, and so I think there's an issue of opportunity that is sometimes lost in deciding whether a dog is smart or not and, as you say, depending on what kind of intelligence you're thinking about, you're going to have a huge range and individual dogs are always going to be different.
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You're not going to find one thing that is absolutely true across a breed.
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Right, yeah, that is such a huge factor and I think people get very swayed by a stereotype of a breed or maybe you know kind of an overriding characteristic or what's.
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You know what's the popular thing?
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I mean, one of the things that I always try to stress on this show is fit, you know, and it's like when you pick a dog, whatever you pick, but focusing on dogs obviously today is you have to know what you know.
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What are you looking for that animal to be able to do for you, with you?
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Without you, what kind of lifestyle do you live?
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What kind of you know?
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All of these things kind of feed into it, instead of just picking what the breed of the day is based on.
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You know what celebrities have or what movie has come out that has made some dog wildly popular.
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I always cringe when I see a dog movie come out because it's like, oh good Lord, everybody does not need to go out and get a Chihuahua or a Belgian Malinois or whatever it might be.
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You know, a St Bernard.
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It's kind of scary how people make, how people make their decisions about their, about their pets, and then not taking in the individual considerations.
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So how did you, like I said, you know, I love the balance of the statistics and the obvious extensive research that you did with the stories.
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What made you decide to go that way and how did you find that?
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Because it seems like just the right balance.
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It's like, you know, you're getting the statistical and then there's a story that backs that up and it's just kind of a nice back and forth, at least as a listener, because I have it on audio and also writing jumping back and forth.
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Yeah, it's, you know that's.
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I appreciate you saying that, because for me that's kind of the best way always to to present information is to you know, if there is sciencey stuff that needs to be presented, you need to soften that, you need to balance that out with something that keeps people going, because it is a little information overload otherwise, and the more you can bring it back to the dog, the favorite thing that we're all reading for, the more people are going to stick with it and hopefully glean actually some of that information, actually some of that information.
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But I just, for me, the personal stuff, the getting into the field with dogs, the talking to people, all of that is what's so wonderful about the process.
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You know, getting the facts and figures is interesting, but that is certainly not the best part of the writing process for me, and so for me it was probably a matter of oh wait, I probably should put some more science in this.
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It can't just be cool stories of dogs, because you know, my preference is always to focus on the people and the animals directly and tell their stories.
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Right.
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Right, I know that you did some stuff like.
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One of the stories that I particularly honed in on was this story of a family where the father had diabetes and it really impacted not just his life but the entire family's life.
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And then they got a medical dog and you had mentioned talking to them via Zoom, but you also traveled all over the place.
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Are there particular experiences or a story that you could share about someplace you went or somebody you met, a dog you met?
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That just really jumps out at you as like that was a life-changing experience for me.
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Yeah, yeah, and I have to.
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I should say that you know this.
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A lot of my reporting was happening during the pandemic, and so my my original list of things I was going to do had to keep getting a little bit shorter, a little bit shorter.
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But people were so generous I mean, we'd all know dog people are some of the best people and they really went out of their way to make it work despite all of the circumstances.
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And so I still did quite a bit of field work.
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It was all in the States.
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So that was a little bit of a change, because initially I thought I would expand out, but ultimately I think that was probably best.
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Or this book would have been a doorstop of a book, because it would have been just too much.
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But yeah, I had a lot of wonderful experience.
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One that I get into quite a bit is spending time at the Seeing Eye in New Jersey, where they were very generous to let me come and observe training for these dogs and to meet some of the dogs to go out, you know, during part of the training, where they're literally on the street with these dogs with the harness on them, teaching them how to do what they do protect their person, get their person to where they need to go, but also, really importantly, to know when to refuse a command because they know something that the person doesn't know.
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So this concept I hadn't, really wasn't familiar with, called intelligent disobedience, where the dog has to know.
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You know, usually if the person is giving me the forward command, I'm going to do it, but hey, there's this branch hanging down and I need to sidestep that and so, or you know, there's a bike coming around the corner that the person isn't aware of and I have to know that it's okay for me to refuse in this case.
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And to me that was a really remarkable kind of you know mental gymnastics that these dogs have to do.
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That I hadn't considered and how you know that's something that they would have to do as assistance dogs with Alzheimer's patients, which is a relatively new area where they're trying to train dogs to assist.
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You know, talk about an inconsistent partner.
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You know, potentially somebody who's can be suddenly angry or suddenly, you know giving false information, or you just don't really know, and how this dog navigates that and still makes the best choices for that person.
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I find that incredible to me and I can't wait to see how that all goes as they advance that.
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Yeah, it's amazing the things that people are working on and we actually did a whole episode.
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Well, we've done a couple of episodes that have involved a friend of mine, donna Mack, who has a seeing eye dog named Wella, and you know, one was about how false assistance dogs really hurt everybody who really needs one.
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That was a whole other thing.
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And then we did one on guide dog training and just things that I just kind of thought, okay, the dog knows how to get to the store, it's like you have to teach them no duh.
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I know they smell the groceries.
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They smell yeah, they smell the beef, they're going to the beef.
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But I love the the fact that you not only observed it, but did you not try that out too with a?
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guide dog.
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That was very brave, Indeed.
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Yeah, it's a lot of trust there it was.
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That was actually I forgot that was the point of what I was getting to.
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So, yeah, they kindly allowed me to experience a little bit of what that's like to grab onto that harness and to completely trust this animal to do, you know, take you where you need to go without banging into anything or tripping.
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And you know, we were in New York and it was pretty crazy.
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It was, you know, a crowded street in Manhattan and I kind of got a little bit of a sense of what that's like.
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And it was powerful to experience it because you, first of all, this dog moved very fast.
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I expected we were going to sort of plot along so that I could be very tentative about it.
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And we were moving but I didn't bump into anything.
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We stopped at the crosswalk, you know, the dog did all the things it was supposed to do.
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That was a dog named Jesse, who appears in the book a few times, and a dog in training, you know, still kind of learning the ropes.
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But again, just to actually have that experience and then write about it rather than just talk to somebody who can say this is what it's like.
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That was important to me for making the book really readable and accessible.
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Right, and I know that you talked about your own dog in the book.
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I don't remember the dog's name, but I remember it was a Jindo.
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Yes, I do have a Jindo Getty is his name.
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Okay, does the experience of having you know well all of your experiences and putting this book together does it?
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How has that changed how you look at your own dog?
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A lot actually we have two and they're very, very different personalities.
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A Jindo for anyone who doesn't know Jindos, they're not for everyone, you know, they're not going to be your cuddly loves everybody kind of dog, very high prey, drive, very smart, not easy to train, all the things.
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But we've had a couple of them and I will say, regarding the question of is it a breed thing?
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I mean our first Jindo and this Jindo are very different beasts in many, many ways in terms of personality.
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But you know, kind of watching our current two dogs navigating one another, they have sort of a touchy relationship a little bit, because the Jindo is sort of the alpha in the house and has made that clear.
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And my other dog, which is a Kaiken it's a Japanese breed and I've really learned to observe how he behaves, who navigates those moods and does some very smart things to make sure he's getting what he wants the attention or the spot on the bed or whatever, just sort of observing that, the body language and the thinking process.
00:21:15.073 --> 00:21:21.134
And then, in other ways, I'm different with them in that I'm more, I think, more patient with them.
00:21:21.134 --> 00:21:25.711
I have a little less expectation of them understanding what I want.
00:21:25.711 --> 00:21:32.861
I appreciate that I didn't do a great job of training, and so a lot of the things that they don't do right is my fault, not their fault.
00:21:34.053 --> 00:21:34.856
I'm the same way.
00:21:34.856 --> 00:21:37.436
My dogs are like the worst trained dogs.
00:21:37.617 --> 00:21:38.359
It's embarrassing.
00:21:38.359 --> 00:21:52.113
It's embarrassing, but my husband kids me because he's like, well, you know dogs, you wrote a book about dogs and you can't get your own dog to X or Y but but but yeah, I think, and I just appreciate, you know, I think about their sensory experience more.
00:21:52.113 --> 00:21:56.509
I give them more time on walks to just sniff, you know, let them dig a little bit.
00:21:56.509 --> 00:21:58.512
If they want to dig, let them chew on things.
00:21:58.512 --> 00:22:15.528
Just give them more time to be dogs and to do things that normally I might pull back on the leash because you know, my tendency is to well, I don't want them to get hurt, I don't want them to, you know, and I think there's a balance there of letting dogs just do what's natural for them, which is good for them.
00:22:15.528 --> 00:22:25.773
It's good for their mental health, it's good for their intelligence and making sure, obviously, that they're safe and living within the confines of our manners and our human niche.
00:22:25.773 --> 00:22:31.137
So it's definitely changed my thinking around them and hopefully they appreciate it.
00:22:31.857 --> 00:22:32.798
Yeah, yeah.
00:22:32.798 --> 00:22:36.701
And, like I had said, I'm not even 100% away through the books.
00:22:36.701 --> 00:22:47.434
I keep going back and listening to certain sections again because it's like it's just there's so much there and it's but already in what I've covered so far.
00:22:47.434 --> 00:22:48.681
I look at my dogs differently too.
00:22:48.681 --> 00:22:58.472
Like I was thinking about the whole vacuum cleaner thing the other day and and the just the volume of things and the overwhelm that, the chaos that my life might bring to my poor pets.
00:22:58.472 --> 00:23:11.541
And then, you know, to add, on top of that, one of the dogs that we have is supposed to be up for adoption but has not found a home yet, is a blind pit bull, and it's like gosh, you take away that, that element.
00:23:11.843 --> 00:23:19.138
You know, and I was actually, as I was getting ready for this episode this morning, I was thinking about I wonder what would be worse for her not being able to smell or not being well.
00:23:19.138 --> 00:23:23.154
Obviously she can't see, but like losing one or the other, how much that would impact.
00:23:23.154 --> 00:23:25.357
And it's kind of like well, one or the other how much that would impact.
00:23:25.357 --> 00:23:27.079
And it's kind of like well, at least she can still smell.
00:23:27.079 --> 00:23:38.252
But her world has got to be super different than the other dogs, and then it got me wondering do they know how different she is?
00:23:38.272 --> 00:23:40.884
And it really gets you thinking more deeply about these animals that we spend so much time with.
00:23:40.884 --> 00:24:05.781
One of the things I wanted to ask, too, is that in this process of understanding and it kind of ties into lessons which I want to I want to get to in a minute but how much do you think that the way that we live our lives takes away from our ability to see our dog's intelligence and then also allowing them to live up to their full potential or quality of life that they could live?
00:24:05.781 --> 00:24:08.517
It's like the digging that was a perfect example.
00:24:08.517 --> 00:24:16.182
It's like I mean, a lot of people rehome their dog if it starts digging and it's more about my flower beds than my dog doing what my dog's supposed to do.
00:24:16.182 --> 00:24:18.214
Or we recently had a dog, bonnie.
00:24:18.295 --> 00:24:31.842
I might've gotten into the gory details on the podcast episode, but one of the reasons that we had such trouble finding her a home is that you talk about prey drive like anything that was going to be other than other dogs, anything that was going to be in her space.
00:24:31.842 --> 00:24:35.105
She was going to catch it and she was going to do some serious damage.
00:24:35.105 --> 00:24:36.106
Let's just leave it at that.
00:24:36.106 --> 00:24:40.780
And people were appalled like, oh you know, she killed two cats.
00:24:40.780 --> 00:24:48.044
That's a terrible thing and it's like I mean, yeah, it was a terrible thing for the cats and it was a terrible thing for me because one of them was one of my barn cats.
00:24:48.044 --> 00:24:52.942
At the same time, I don't condemn the dog for doing it's a bull terrier.
00:24:52.942 --> 00:24:56.279
I mean that's what they do.
00:24:56.279 --> 00:25:09.266
So I know that's a convoluted way, I guess, the question being like what kind of negative impact do you think we have in trying to rein those behaviors in and take away from their ability to express their intelligence?
00:25:10.471 --> 00:25:28.980
Yeah, I think it's something that we forget because we see our coddled dog on the couch, you know, getting fed and petted and loved, and we forget that we have taken some things away in order to create this pet that we love and adore and of course, we want the best for it and we don't think about are we taking anything away?
00:25:28.980 --> 00:25:34.875
Is there something that this dog would do if it weren't doing what it's supposed to be doing, if it were misbehaving?
00:25:34.875 --> 00:25:38.378
In our minds, what does that look like and why is it doing that?
00:25:38.378 --> 00:25:47.861
Is it in some cases because, you know, maybe digging is self-soothing in a stressful situation you have to kind of look, I think more broadly at why a dog is doing what it's doing.
00:25:47.861 --> 00:25:54.156
Think about that a little bit bigger picture rather than just immediately assuming the dog is misbehaving, is being bad.
00:25:54.598 --> 00:25:57.614
I mean, I don't know that dogs are ever being bad.
00:25:57.855 --> 00:26:19.657
I mean that's kind of a subjective thing, that's just a term we use, but it's really about you know, yeah, we've taken away some of their access to their natural tools by pulling them back from things, and I completely understand you don't want your dog humping other dogs at the dog park or running away, but I think you just it's a balance.
00:26:19.869 --> 00:26:21.730
You know it's never going to be 100%.
00:26:21.730 --> 00:26:23.757
We're not partners with dogs.
00:26:23.757 --> 00:26:47.300
I mean, we do own them, we do make decisions for them, and I think it's partly just a matter of being more aware of those things and looking for opportunities to let them shine in their natural way, whether that means letting them roll around in the mud a bit and so they get a bath, it's probably worth it for them to get, to have that moment and do that thing, to give them back a little of their dogness.
00:26:47.300 --> 00:26:57.176
But I think people are so ready to stop a situation with a dog without really thinking through whether is this really a problem, you know, is there really anything wrong with this?
00:26:57.176 --> 00:26:59.798
Is this just dogs being dogs, and is that OK?
00:26:59.798 --> 00:27:02.939
And I'm trying to do more of that myself.
00:27:03.671 --> 00:27:06.901
I'm so glad that you made the point about you know, are they being bad?
00:27:06.990 --> 00:27:28.323
Because I think one of the biggest mistakes that humans make and I do it too I'll call my dog a bad dog or you know she did that on purpose, but that in reality, when I'm not like in the emotional moment of being upset with something that the dog has done which has usually been my fault because I allowed it to happen that's a whole nother episode.
00:27:28.323 --> 00:27:35.980
But kind of one of the things that I like about dogs and animals in general is that they don't do things out of malice.
00:27:35.980 --> 00:27:46.932
I mean, there might be some higher level animals that have the thinking capacity to say, okay, let me figure out a way to ruin this guy's day, but dogs, they don't do that and they don't have bad behaviors.
00:27:46.932 --> 00:27:56.694
They have undesired behaviors for us as humans, but at least they're not doing it because they're trying to ruin your day or because they want to destroy your sofa, so you have to spend money you don't have.
00:27:56.955 --> 00:27:59.107
That's not what they're about, and so I you know.
00:27:59.107 --> 00:28:07.493
If nothing else, I hope people really kind of get to understand the behavior and then you can, you know, see where it's coming from a little bit better yeah sure.
00:28:07.493 --> 00:28:12.674
And then there was something else I wanted to hone in on there that you said too oh, just the enrichment.
00:28:12.674 --> 00:28:15.040
You know the ability to give pets in enrichment.
00:28:15.040 --> 00:28:19.240
You know it's like to a certain degree I understand the level of some pampering that happens.
00:28:19.240 --> 00:28:21.011
I, I am not of that.
00:28:21.413 --> 00:28:33.702
I don't know if it's a generational thing or just, you know, I consider myself a pet guardian, not a pet parent, and I have mentally in my mind categories of the types of people that have pets in their lives.
00:28:33.702 --> 00:28:41.317
But at the same time, I think even somebody who considers themselves a pet parent really needs to consider, you know, what's in the best interest of that pet.
00:28:41.317 --> 00:28:55.012
And yet, whether it's the rolling in the mud, or giving them a place to dig, or taking them places where they can use their nose, like you said, and let them sniff things, it's just, you know, like you said, allowing dogs to be dogs.
