22/10/2026
Why are we still putting our hands out for dogs to sniff when we meet them?
It's been the accepted way of greeting a dog for as long as I can remember. Somebody meets your puppy, they bend down, put their hand towards their nose and wait for a sniff. I've even heard people explain that they're doing it so the puppy can recognise their scent. But your puppy could probably smell that person before they even walked through the door. Their clothes, their shoes, other animals they've been around, even where they've been that morning... there's an extraordinary amount of information available to a dog's nose without anybody having to put their hand directly in front of it. And yet we still treat that outstretched hand as some sort of introduction. I find that quite interesting, because we're deciding how the greeting should happen before we've really given the puppy much opportunity to show us what they'd prefer. And depending on the puppy, having an unfamiliar hand coming towards their face might be absolutely fine, or it might make them feel rather uncomfortable.
I think we sometimes get a little caught up in whether a puppy approaches somebody, rather than paying attention to what they do afterwards. You might have a puppy who wanders over, has a good sniff and then turns away or takes a couple of steps backwards. Another puppy might stay close, perhaps sniff again and seem quite happy being near that person. Those are different interactions, even though both puppies initially approached.
And there's a rather important distinction here, because investigating somebody isn't necessarily the same as wanting physical contact. Your puppy might be curious about who somebody is, particularly if they're unfamiliar, whilst still feeling a little unsure about having that person touch them. We see this sort of thing in all sorts of situations with puppies. They'll approach something, investigate it, move away, perhaps come back for another look... and that's useful information for us. They're working out how they feel about what's in front of them, and sometimes they need a bit of time to do that. If somebody immediately starts stroking them because they've had a sniff, we can end up rushing an interaction that the puppy might otherwise have chosen to approach more cautiously. Of course, a head turn or a step backwards doesn't automatically mean they're uncomfortable either. We'd want to look at their posture, how freely they're moving, what else is happening around them and whether they're choosing to come back. It's the whole interaction I'm interested in, rather than one particular movement.
Personally, I'd rather somebody meeting your puppy for the first time just kept their hands relaxed and gave them a bit of space. We don't need to encourage the puppy over, and we certainly don't need everybody they meet to stroke them. If they want to investigate, that's fine, and if they'd rather stay where they are, that's fine too.
I think we could make puppy socialisation a lot easier for some dogs if we stopped assuming every introduction needed to involve touching. Sometimes we can simply allow our puppies to be around people, take in what's happening and get on with whatever they were doing. There's plenty of learning going on without us having to turn every encounter into a greeting 💛
