Photo by Andrii Podilnyk on Unsplash

It’s a well-known fact that walking with a dog will prolong your life. If however, like us you don’t own a furry friend, then there are multiple ways to get the benefits vicariously. Try Barking mad dog care to have someone else’s pets to stay with you in your own home as we did for over 10 years. We’ve found that this to be a great way to learn all about different breeds of dogs. However, some owners, don’t like this particular service as they don’t ever get to meet the dog carer, but it’s safe to say that everyone who embarks on Barkingmad.uk.com doggy daycare is a dog lover. They back you up all the way too, so if you don’t know everything there is to know about pets this is a great way to get hands-on learning.

Or you can offer to walk your neighbor’s dog, especially if they are elderly or infirm and would greatly appreciate the extra help. If your neighbors don’t have an available pet, try borrowmydoggy.com which connects dog owners with trusted local people who would love to look after their dog, a win, win all around. And if you’re free to travel around the country then Trustedhousesitters.com, Nomador.com, Trustmypetsitter.com and a multitude of other sites offer a list of homes where the owners are looking for someone to stay in their home and care for their pets whilst they are on holiday.  The majority of these options will not pay you, so if you’re looking for a paid career change then this is not it! But it’s a great way to see the world and look after animals at the same time, we have found this to be a greatly enjoyable way to see parts of the UK, and are planning to go further afield in the future, so why don’t you give it a go? 

Photo by Marek Szturc on Unsplash

Many times I’ll see a dog owner pulling their dog away from a place with a really great scent! I wonder would you like it if someone pulled you away from the scent of freshly made coffee, a loaf of newly baked bread, or a bouquet of roses? Dogs possess up to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses, compared to a humans 6 million. Part of a dog’s brain is specifically devoted to analysing scents, and proportionally speaking is 40 times greater than humans.

Dogs can detect odors in parts per trillion, Alexandra Horowitz, a dog-cognition researcher at Barnard College, in her book ‘Inside of a Dog’, writes; “While we might notice if our coffee has had a teaspoon of sugar added to it, a dog could detect a teaspoon of sugar in an Olympic-sized pool! “. Try listening to Alexandra’s very interesting Ted talk on how do dogs ‘see’ with their noses? Landmarks on lamp-posts, trees, stones, and pavements are an absolute story to your dog. When trained our dogs can tell you all sorts of things, they can help us find bombs, drugs, cancer, and many other things, so please just let them smell that scent on your walk!

Mark Scott from dog caring daycare; dog-stroll.co.uk actively encourages the dogs in his care to smell with the Sensory Garden he has created after attending a study on how dogs can self medicate. His sensory garden is a great example to us all of what we should and could do to keep our dogs interested and entertained with edible plants, tunnels, a straw pit, bamboo forest, and a willow dome. So if your dog is wanting to stop and ‘smell the roses’ then let them, you never know it may save your life one day!