Can dogs tell the time?
- Irina Brūniņa
- Jan 23
- 5 min read
I enjoy analyzing various video materials.
Analyzing this BBC video, Inside the Animal Mind (“Can dogs tell the time?”), seemed like an interesting task to me. From the perspective of a trailing instructor and dog training specialist, and of course, with a focus on how the phenomenon shown relates to the work of tracking dogs.
The video shows a dog of the Vyzhla breed named Jazz, who, about 20 minutes before her owner's usual return time, begins to show pronounced anticipation: she walks back and forth, “scans” the window/space, and her excitement noticeably increases. Before the owner returns home, a “fresh” portion of his scent is brought into the house (in the video, it is his smelly sports clothes, which are ‘spread’ around the house). After that, the usual anticipation disappears at the “right” time, and the owner's arrival becomes a surprise for the dog.
The logic of the video's authors is that the dog does not orient itself by the “clock,” but by the fading of the residual scent of the person in the house to a familiar ‘threshold’ level — a kind of “olfactory clock.” The authors emphasize that this is not a strict scientific verification, but a visual, everyday demonstration of the hypothesis.
What is described in the video as “the dog knows” can usually be broken down into several components in behavioral terms:
Anticipation (waiting for an event). Pacing, moving to the window/door, repeated “checks” — typical behavior when waiting for a significant event. This is not “magic,” but an increase in arousal + search activity.
Search scanning of the environment. In such scenarios, windows/doors are points where clues converge: sound, air movement, external smells. From a sensory point of view, the dog seems to be “re-asking” the environment: “are the conditions right?”
Threshold mechanism. When a certain set of signals (including smell) reaches a familiar state, a threshold is triggered and waiting behavior begins. This is what “breaks” in the demonstration when the owner's scent is artificially refreshed.
The hypothesis that “dogs can smell time” is actively discussed in the cynological community (in particular, by Alexandra Horowitz): smells change and dissipate over time, and dogs are able to detect very subtle differences in intensity/freshness.
I believe that this video is useful as a model of thinking (“there is time in smell”), but it cannot be interpreted as “scientifically proven that dogs know time exactly.”
What is the significance of the behavior described in the video for trailing? It is a kind of illustration of what a handler works with in the process of training a tracking dog.
In my opinion, the video illustrates not “the dog knows the time,” but something more practical: the dog can rely on the dynamics of the scent pattern (how the intensity/freshness of a person's familiar scent in the environment changes) and on threshold states (“when it becomes like this, an event usually occurs”).
Behaviorally, this looks like an increase in “anticipation” before the onset of a familiar event, a series of ‘checks’ (window/door/key points in the house), a change in strategy when the scent pattern is artificially “mixed/refreshed.”
Understanding how “time is embedded in smell” helps to understand how dogs work with old tracks. In the process of following a trail, a dog constantly works with what can be called a freshness gradient: conditionally “stronger/newer” versus “weaker/older.” The KPBS article (https://www.kpbs.org/news/news/science-technology/2022/12/22/can-dogs-smell-time-just-ask-donut-the-dog) provides a direct practical formulation: trailing dogs use the intensity of the scent, which depends on the age of the trail, to choose the direction (fresher smells are usually more intense). When gods follow the scent, a dog acts according to the logic that where the smell intensifies/becomes “fresher” — that is the ‘right’ direction, and where the smell fades/becomes “older” — that is an area of doubt or a negative indication. The demonstration in the house is the same mechanism, only instead of a route, you have a “home scent ecosystem.”
The “scent update” in the trailing video communicates with an understanding of contamination (false freshness in trailing).
After the owner's scented clothing was brought into the room, the dog stopped waiting.
In trailing work, this corresponds to a contaminated scent article, a “fresh portion” of the target scent brought on hands/clothes at the wrong point, secondary transfer (the target was sitting in the car, touching objects, someone hugged the target and brought the scent to the start, etc.). In other words, a fresh portion of the target scent appears in the start zone or on the route. In the wrong place/at the wrong time, the dog receives conflicting signals and, in the absence of experience, may shift its decision (up to a “surprise” at the moment of the real event, as in the video).
And the consequences are the same: the dog changes its decision because the “freshness threshold” no longer matches reality.
Hence the understanding that working on a real search is a separate applied discipline: logistics, contact control, clean start, tactics, and operational thinking skills are important here.
Air movement = “pockets,” “corridors,” and shifts. Horowitz makes an important point: we visualize air movement — and in essence, we visualize the movement of scent.
For a trailing dog handler, this means that the scent does not lie in a “straight line”; it forms accumulations and transfers. A dog can suddenly “come alive” in a scent pocket and just as suddenly ‘lose’ it in a ventilated area — this is normal physics of the environment, not a “dog mistake.”
The verification behavior shown in the video correlates with working “trailing indications.”
Pacing/approaches to the window/scanning — a domestic analogue of what looks like short direction checks, casting, micro-turns of the head/body, “putting the picture together” before making a decision.
Observation gives us an important methodological conclusion: do not suppress the dog's natural locomotion, but read its behavior, gather information (and record where the dog gives negative/uncertain indications).
If the handler does not keep this in mind, they will misinterpret the behavior as “the dog made a mistake,” even though the dog is honestly reading the physics of the environment.
The demonstration clearly shows the threshold principle: the dog often works not “exactly on time,” but on “match/no match” sets of sensory cues. For trailing K9, this is a direct reminder: contamination = change of decision (locomotion). The most common “human” mistake is to think that the dog “should ignore” fresh introduced scents. In fact, the dog should take them into account, differentiate them, and isolate the scent to follow. Negatives, casting, trailing circles, and checks are a normal part of the job. The handler's task is not to pressure, but to record where and why they occur (wind, surfaces, intersections, secondary scents). And to draw conclusions.
Thus,
“trail age” must be trained as a separate parameter: the same type of terrain, but different ages and different weather conditions — so that the dog learns to read the gradient consistently.
Work proactively: know all the information about the scent article (who touches it, where it is stored, who contacts the target before the start), exclude uncontrolled scent transfer by the handler.
Be able to read not only the dog's indications, but also thresholds and combinations, identify the moment before a negative, identify the behavior at the moment when the dog “transitions” from following to searching (and back) — this is the key to tactics in real tasks.
Identify “scent pockets” and ‘gaps’ (wind/temperature/air stagnation): this increases the predictability of the team's work and reduces the risk of misinterpreting the dog's behavior.
Want to develop your dog's “reading” skills? Review this video. And note where exactly the dog begins to anticipate (which point in the house), what signs: head up (air scenting) or nose down (ground investigation), is there a repeating route (waiting pattern), what happens immediately after the scent is introduced: pause, switch, increased sniffing, “reset anticipation,” locomotion: plasticity/tension, speed, focus of gaze, are there signs of stress (licking, yawning, breakdown in self-calming) or is it pure anticipation.
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