Trainer explains how dogs use their noses and sense of smell to miraculously tell time

Have you ever wondered how your dog is waking you up to go for a walk in the mornings and asking for dinner in the evenings? Do they understand the concept of time? According to dog trainer Victoria Stilwell, they understand it but not in the way humans do. Stilwell—who goes by @vspositively on TikTok—talks about how the dogs' noses called "leathers" are used by them to understand the time of the day. "The dark part of your dog's nose is called a leather, and everyone is unique," similar to human fingerprints, she says in the video. "No two noses are the same." Stilwell goes on to explain more about the nose

"The end of your dog's nose is always cold and wet because that moisture traps scent molecules because that moisture traps scent molecules that are then taken up by the nose and filtered up through the nose by tiny hairs called cilia." She says that dogs are much better at breathing than we are. "If you look at your dog's nostrils you'll see that they're kind of like human nostrils, but they also have slits at the side they're called nares," Stilwell states. It makes their sniffing very efficient.

Moreover, dogs have an average of 220 million to a billion scent receptors. "It is said that if you took a drop of human sweat and you put it into, like, a cubic meter of air, a person would smell it, and so would a dog," she says. "But you take that drop of human sweat and you put it in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, your dog will be able to smell it which is incredible," expresses the dog trainer. So, this keen sense of smell allows dogs to take in all the information including how to tell time. "When a dog smells something in the air, they're smelling the future. When they are smelling something on the ground, they are smelling something that was there," says Stilwell. "Air moves very differently in your house throughout the day. During the day, air rises from the walls to the ceiling, and at night it comes back down to the ground. But in general, dogs might be able to tell the time of day just by where the air is placed in the house."

The video has about 741k views and is captioned, "Dogs can tell time just by smelling it! This and more nose facts." @OgdanFry commented, "My dog is fed at 6 o’clock every night, at 5:59 he will come and stare at me until I feed him." @lazypuillowtalk wrote, "I love watching my dog sniff because you can tell she’s focusing on that smell and trying to process it." @veronicarae_ said, "I’ve always known they can tell time to some degree. As a child, my pitbull would be waiting at the window the moment my bus dropped me off. As an adult, both of my dogs come into my office when I start." @sallee75 shared, "My dog has cucumber at 3 pm every day, and from around 2.55 he sits and stares at me until I go and get it for him." @shortysmalls wrote, "My dog has cucumber at 3 pm every day and from around 2.55 he sits and stares at me until I go and get it for him."

You can follow Victoria Stilwell (@vspositively) on TikTok for more content on training dogs.