I always knew dogs had an incredible sense of smell, but did you know they can smell 100,000 times better than humans? Or that dogs can smell things up to 40 feet underground?

There’s an article from the Animal Health Care Center newsletter about a dog’s sense of smell, it contains some very informative information.

Here are six interesting facts, how many did you know?

1. The USDA uses Jack Russell Terriers to detect brown tree snakes hidden on cargo being loaded on planes in Guam.

2. The US Customs and Border Protection has 800 canine teams which look for explosives, drugs, concealed people, and even hidden currency.

3. Dogs check international travelers at borders and airports for agricultural contraband and find 75,000 items a year.

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Two recent studies, the first by Gabriella Lakatos a researcher in the Department of Ethology at Eotvos University, compared a 2-year-old child’s capacity to understand human pointing gestures with a dog’s.

The results show dogs had zero learning time to figure out the visual communication. The study goes on to claim that due to domestication dogs appear predisposed to read other human visual signals.

For her study on dogs and kids, Lakatos and her colleagues used a combination of finger-, elbow-, leg- and knee-pointing gestures to help dogs locate hidden food and, for children, a favorite toy.

Two-year-olds and dogs understood everything except knee-pointing and when the experimenter’s index finger pointed in a different direction than the protruding arm. For example, they were confused when the individual raised an arm in a certain direction, but used her finger to point the other way.

Human 3-year-olds, on the other hand, aced all of the tests.

Lakatos said that “in human children between the age of two and three years, important changes take place that go beyond the capacities of dogs.” Many of these changes have to do with development of language skills.

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An infectious superbug capable of being passed from pets to humans is on the rise and becoming increasingly problematic.

It was only a few years ago when scientists suspected that the bacteria was being transmitted by pets.

The superbug, a strain of bacteria known as MRSA, has evolved a resistance to antibiotics. It has long plagued hospitals but in recent years has become more common in homes. MRSA has even invaded beaches.

In the July edition of The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Richard Oehler of the University of South Florida College of Medicine and colleagues lay out the latest thinking on MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and pets.

The infections can be transmitted by animal bites and most threaten young children, the researchers note.

“As community-acquired strains of MRSA increase in prevalence, a growing body of clinical evidence has documented MRSA colonization in domestic animals, often implying direct acquisition of S aureus infection from their human owners,” they write. “MRSA colonization has been documented in companion animals such as horses, dogs, and cats, and these animals have been viewed as potential reservoirs of infection.”

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This story should raise a lot of hackles.  According to Ethologist Kenth Svartberg of Sweden’s Stockholm University purebred dogs are getting dumber.

Svartberg claims due to modern breeding practices we are diminishing intelligence.  Are we dumbing down our dogs?

Svartberg tested 13,000 dogs to determine the degree to which they exhibited traits such as curiosity and sociability. He used the findings to rate the intelligence of 31 breeds. The Telegraph reports on the results:

He found that those bred for appearance, and especially for shows, displayed reduced levels of all these qualities. He also found that attractive appearance was often linked with introversion and a boring personality.

Dr. Svartberg said: “Perhaps the genes behind attractive looks could also be closely linked to those that cause fearfulness.”

Svartberg’s research showed that some breeds that were originally intended to perform important jobs requiring skill and intelligence — such as the smooth collie, bred for herding, and the Rhodesian Ridgeback, bred for hunting — were among those hardest hit by the trend of breeding for looks.

Further, “[the] trend is reflected in the popularity of so-called ‘handbag dogs’,” notes the Telegraph.

So, what’s the conclusion, are  dogs or scientists getting dumber?  Give me a bark.

* I don’t know, Dazzle looks pretty smart to me.

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I don’t know if anyone has watched the parody “I Kissed A Dog,” but it’s pretty funny, in a somewhat sick sort of way. Watch it, you’ll see what I mean.

Well, thanks to findings of a recent study by Kansas State University veterinarian Kate Stenske, no one can say doggy kisses aren’t safe.

Stenske looked at the incidence of the E. coli bacteria in both dogs and their owners. Studies show that more than half of dog owners fell into the face-licking camp, she says — and, fortunately for them, they were no more likely to harbor the bacteria than those who employed, as our colleague Shari Roan at the Booster Shots blog put it, “stricter human-pet hygiene practices.”

E. coli can cause serious health problems when it acquires genes that make it resistant to antibiotics. Stenske found that 10% of the dog-human pairs shared the same E. coli strains and that the strains had more antibiotic resistance than was expected. The owners had more multiple-drug resistant strains than their pets, which means it’s more likely owners spread such strains to their pets than pets spread to their owners. While bed-sharing and face-licking didn’t increase the prevalence of E. coli, owners who didn’t wash their hands after petting their dogs or before cooking meals did have more antibiotic-resistant E. coli. The study is scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Veterinary Research.

I wonder if they looked at dogs who raided the kitty litter?

* Toby giving his mom some kisses. Who could turn down kisses from that face?

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