E08 | Wonderful World of Puppies | Senses awoken

The Puppies are back with extraordinary, moving and funny stories from the formative months of their lives. This week, the puppies are using their phenomenal sense of smell, which is about x times stronger than a human’s. We meet Tinker the rescue Labrador, who is training as a ‘conservation dog’. Her job will involve being able to sniff out rare newts and bats, in order that they can be protected. Tinker passes her elementary sniff test with flying colours but after a bit of hard work, she wants to play hard… Whether that means getting filthy, or soaked! Hallie and Hamlet are Cocker Spaniels who will also be using their noses to make a living. They’re going to be ‘competition gun dogs’ and will be expected to seek out and retrieve fallen game birds. Lesson number one coincides with a snowfall. As the excited puppies play in the snow, their trainers introduce them to the mind-blowing smell of pheasant. Rare, Small Munsterlander puppies break out of their house on the south coast, to be assaulted by a cacophony of smells of the outside world, ranging from chickens in the garden to seagulls, wheeling over their heads, on the Gosport ferry. We meet a litter of so-called ‘Sproodles’ ( Springer Spaniel – Poodle mix), growing up on a farm in Fife. With 750 acres of fields to get lost in, they need to learn how to smell their way home. And we encounter the Chihuahua Chicos from Chingford as they learn the benefits of sniffing out treats in the grass.