Meeting Their Needs: Scent Enrichment

Scent is one form of enrichment that is simultaneously popular, and vastly under-utilized in the shelter environment. While spraying aerosols in the kennel area is a popular recommendation, it does not allow animals any agency in their participation. It can be similar to your manager burning incense in your communal office and many of the workers finding it unpleasant but impossible to avoid. Instead, any scents in the kennel area should be exceedingly mild or non-existent as dogs and cats have a significantly better sense of smell. There are a number of different ways to offer scent enrichment that are less overwhelming. It’s also important to note that animals will find different smells appealing compared to humans. Look at what dogs spend the most time sniffing!

One way to offer scent enrichment is to plant a small scent garden for dogs to walk through. This can be as big as planting a variety of native, dog-safe plants in a play yard or as small as having a few potent potted plants along a popular walkway. What to include? We recommend herbs such as mint, basil, lavender, and chamomile, as well as a mix of safe foraging plants such as wheat grass, catnip, green beans, blueberry and strawberry plants, and some safe flowers like marigolds, sunflowers, and clary sage. If going the potted plant route, it may work best to have a wide variety that gets traded out monthly to avoid habituation (and oversaturation of urine). Alternatively, you can also provide scent enrichment in-kennel by placing paper or cardboard in an airtight container with the desired smell on a cotton pad for 24-48 hours and then offering the scented item at the kennel door and noting if the animal is enjoying the scent through continued engagement and relaxed body language. By not offering the scent directly, the smell is less intense and gives the animal more ability to opt in or out. 

We can also offer scents of other animals during outings or in-kennel. Offer a used blanket from another (healthy) dog or cat within your enrichment yard and time how long they engage with it or whose bedding they engage with the longest. Items scented with conspecific smells can be a safe way for some animals to engage socially without the threat of direct/physical contact. Watch closely though, as some may find even the smells of other animals aversive. If your shelter has exotics or small animals, you can also offer used bedding from them either as a sniffing station or tuck cookies inside to make a scented foraging station. If your shelter is in a more urban area with little access to the great outdoors you can also include items scented with wildlife. There are a number of unusual things online, such as raccoon fur and deer urine, to offer within an enrichment yard. Alternatively, just offering a kiddie pool with fallen leaves or grass trimmings from a park on the other side of town could be very enriching to your population. Adding treats to the vegetation can make a unique foraging station as well.

Within the scent enrichment category, we can also include nosework games for both cats and dogs. With cats, you can hide treats around their living space for them to hunt out. For dogs, you can either hide stinky treats around a room for them to find, or you can use a variety of boxes with treats hidden inside. Some dogs have previous experience or are naturally good foragers, using their nose to lead them to stinky items. Other dogs may need some shaping for them to understand the experience. We can assist them by using stinky treats (like hot dogs, lunch meat, pungent cookies, or fish) and shaping the searching behavior by placing food in all boxes the first round, then slowly lowering the ratio of boxes that have food in them to encourage the dog to use their nose to find the food.

We can also meet animals’ safety needs by ensuring their home smells like them. Cats rely on scent to communicate and appear to feel more comfortable in places that smell like them. They have multiple scenting glands across their bodies and several on their faces. When cats rub their faces on things they are often scent marking and letting their community know where they’ve been. Offering cardboard boxes or other porous items in their kennel can promote the species-typical behavior of scent marking and assist with cats feeling more comfortable in the space. It can also be beneficial to not completely refresh bedding, but always leave at least one piece of “old” bedding to retain the cat’s smell.