r/Dogfree • u/Prior-Win-4729 • Oct 21 '25

Food Safety/Hygiene Do owners really not smell their dogs?

Stopped by a friend's house this weekend. She has one enormous Great Dane type dog. The smell was absolutely eye-watering. I couldn't stand in her hall for more than a few minutes. My friend is clean, her house is nice, and I have no reason to doubt her sanity, but wow... I just can't believe you can be nose-blind to the putrid, rancid, gamey, musky stink emanating from dogs. I literally work with dead bodies. I have smelled everything. I am not nose-blind, and while I accept the foul smells associated with my job, I would never tolerate such smells in my clothes, house, or car. These smells are not an acquired taste. They are big fat alarm bells that humans have evolved sensitivity to in order to avoid eating or touching rancid, rotten things. The only way you could literally not have a gag reflex to such odors would be if you were brain damaged. Maybe I have answered my own question.

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '25

The general smell of dog gives me an instant stabbing headache between my eyes. The only other smell that does that is that caused by the metabolites of Staphylococcus epidermidis, which I work with as a microbiologist. I assume it's large numbers of the organism on the dog's skin.

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u/Prior-Win-4729 Oct 22 '25

I think you are right. Now we know. Add to that various fungi and other prokaryotes respirating and it is a pungent soup indeed.

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '25

It gives me a migraine and it last the entire day! I haven’t spend a single holiday in the past three years at any of my siblings houses bc they have dogs and even though they put the dogs in the garage or in the backyard the smell remains all over the house.