Sniffing provides lots of mental stimulation, particularly if your dog is growing old in years. Some dogs, especially as they age, prefer to plod slowly and investigate the scents around them. If your dog is also suffering cognitive decline or loss of sight or hearing, a slow walk with plenty of sniffing time is needed to keep them mentally stimulated.
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We call it a sniffari or them reading the doggy social media. Who’s been where, whos been tagged etc. In fact our 40 min walk this morning took an hour because of sniffing and hunting rabbits (no rabbits were harmed as they were on leads).
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Absolutely - one of the main joys of a walk!
When dogs stop to sniff round their neighbourhood, we say they’re picking up their wee-mails 
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I am always torn between how much sniffing and how much walking my dog should be doing. She requires fairly long walks to empty her bowel as she had cancer and has to take about a mile in order to empty her bowel fully. She would spend 10 minutes smelling one spot of pee if I let her. So I tend to drag her along for a bit and then give her a few minutes of random smelling and then get back to walking. Just don’t have an hour and a half to walk her in the mornings
I call it “checking pee-mail”!