Anyone who has a Shih Tzu at home knows that they are often the first to notice when the owner is coming, even when the owner is still far away.
Two things explain this “hunch” of our pets: senses such as well-developed smell and hearing and the animal’s conditioning.
The Shih-Tzu’s scent identification system (smell) is much more refined than that of humans, explains Ricardo Tamborini, a specialist in animal behavior.
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While humans have an average of five million olfactories (odor-receptor) cells, some races, such as sniffers, may have 220 million.
Furthermore, the area in the dog’s brain devoted to perceiving smells is about 40 times larger than that of humans, proportionately.
To get an idea of the level of sophistication of the canine sense of smell. We can say that, while the human being can perceive by the smell that there is a spoon of sugar in a cup of coffee, a SHIH-TZU can detect the same amount diluted in two full Olympics Pools.
This overdeveloped sense of smell makes Shih-Tzu able not only to know who is arriving before people but also to distinguish who it is by the scent of the perfume, for example.
Shih Tzu hearing
Shih-Tzu’s hearing is also far superior to that of humans, ten times more sensitive. Capable of picking up sounds four times further away and detecting the source of the sound in just six-hundredths of a second.
This extra ability to hear has been developed over evolution. Men have more precise vision than dogs, due to the frontal positioning of the eyes (which allows them to focus better on objects and have a greater visual field). Whereas the eyes of dogs are more lateral and less developed. Thus, hearing must “compensate” for vision.
In addition to anatomy, another factor that helps a Shih-Tzu know that its owner (or anyone else) is coming is animal conditioning. That is if a person always arrives at the same time at home. It is natural for the dog to identify this behavior and begin to wait for him.
“Dogs have no notion of time, but everything that is done every day ends up becoming conditioning”, says Tamborini.
This usually happens at mealtimes. If you usually give the food every day, at 7 am, it doesn’t matter if it’s a holiday or Sunday, the Shih Tzu will be there at that time and waiting for you.
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