Thursday, January 6, 2011

Loss of Smell

I'm trying really hard not to be paranoid here, but I seriously think Coulee is losing her sense of smell.


I kept making excuses for why she was losing toys this winter - she can't smell through the snow, or it must be too cold for her nose to work properly.

Coulee is a dog that can walk into a dog park and find 5 lost toys in 5 minutes.  If you throw a toy for her and she didn't see where it went, you point in the general direction and seconds later, she has found it.  Last winter I lost a toy on a photo session.  It got buried under the snow and we couldn't find it.  A week later, I took Coulee out to the same park and whammo - she found it in minutes.

Did you catch that?  It was winter, it was cold and it was buried in snow.  There goes all my excuses.

I was watching her closely yesterday on our walk.  If she couldn't see the toy, she couldn't find it.  It was super windy and she should have been able to easily pick up its scent... but she couldn't.


I googled Canine Lupus and loss of smell and got a whole bunch of stuff relating to human lupus and loss of smell.  Apparently it isn't uncommon.  I couldn't find anything about it on dogs, but I wasn't that surprised as I doubt it is something that has been studied much (if at all).  Has anyone ever heard of this before?

So while we haven't seen anything more wrong with her feet, or other high risk areas on her body, I'm not convinced we are out of the woods yet.

3 comments:

Blazingstar said...

Dogs definitely have a harder time finding plastic or rubber toys in the snow because of the cold. When we field train in the winter, we have to make sure we add bird scent to our bumpers, otherwise it is very difficult for them to find them when they can't see them.

Have you tried to get her to find a hidden cookie or treat in the house where it's warm? Maybe see how she does with that.

Nasal mites are the only thing that I know of that can cause a loss of a sense of smell.

How is her foot?

giorno26 ¸¸.•*¨*•. said...

Grande cane... spero che presto la sua salute sia O.K. !!!!!
Buona giornata e buon anno 2011 :))
Myriam

onecollie said...

awww, look how cute Coulee's ears are in the first picture :))