What is a sniffari?
A sniffari is a walk where the dog chooses the pace and the route and sniffs as much as it wants. You hold the leash; the dog holds the plan. Trainers also call it a decompression walk or a sniff walk.
Why trainers recommend it
Smell is how a dog reads the world, and a walk at heel gives the dog almost none of it. Two findings are worth knowing. A French field study measured dogs' pulse during walks and found that the more intensely a dog sniffed, the lower its pulse went (Reported by the Animal Humane Society; a field study, not peer-reviewed as far as we can tell). And in a 2019 peer-reviewed study, dogs given two weeks of sniffing games became measurably more optimistic than dogs that did the same walking at heel (Duranton & Horowitz, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 2019). Same exercise, same treats; the difference was the sniffing.
That is the whole case. Nothing here claims sniffing extends life or treats anxiety, and nobody has a number of minutes to prescribe. The research says more sniffing is better for the dog, and stops there.
How to take one
- Use a longer line if you can. A short leash turns every sniff into a tug. Six to fifteen feet on a harness gives the dog room to follow a scent without you having to move.
- Pick a quiet route. A verge, a park edge, a dead-end street. Fewer people and dogs means more attention on the ground.
- Drop the pace goal. You might cover a third of the distance you usually do. That is the point, not a problem.
- Let the dog stop. When the nose goes down, wait. The stop that looks like nothing to you is the dog reading the news.
- Let the dog choose the turn. Where it is safe, follow. A sniffari led by the dog is a different walk from the same route led by you.
Where Sniffari fits
Sniffari is an iPhone app built around exactly this walk. You boop the nose when the sniffing starts and again when it stops, and the app keeps the clock. Every walk shows how much of it was sniffing, and once a dog has a few walks recorded, whether today was more or less than usual. It counts pee and poop breaks, maps the route, and builds a map of your dog's favorite sniff spots. It never sets a goal, because the research doesn't give one.
Questions
- How long should a sniffari be?
- There is no right length. Twenty minutes of unhurried sniffing does more for a dog than an hour at heel. Let the dog decide when it has read enough, and head home before either of you is tired of it.
- Is a sniffari the same as a decompression walk?
- Mostly. Trainers use "decompression walk" for the same idea, often on a long line in a quiet place, and "sniff walk" for the everyday version around the block. A sniffari is any walk where sniffing is the point rather than the interruption.
- Does a sniffari replace exercise?
- It is exercise of a different kind. Sniffing is mental work, and many dogs come home from a slow, sniff-heavy walk calmer than from a fast one. Dogs that need to run still need to run; a sniffari is what to do with the rest of the walks.