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I bet you remember learning about the five senses in school: touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell. But did you know that there are three other “hidden” or “invisible” senses that we have–and our dogs have them, too?
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What are the three hidden senses in dogs?
Let’s dig into what these senses are, and then we’ll be able to discuss why it matters, which is the most important point in this discussion! So, here are the three hidden senses:
Interoception
Have you ever wondered how your body “knows” it’s time to eat or sip water or go to the bathroom? Or, have you ever noticed that when you’re feeling embarrassed your entire body gets hot? Or fear turns your stomach into ice?
Your internal organs have special signals in them to tell your brain something’s going on inside your body. This is your interoceptive system.
This sense answers one question: How do I feel?
Your dogs have this, too.
When you’re potty training a puppy, the key isn’t teaching your dog where to go to the bathroom. That’s part of it, but it’s only secondary to teaching your puppy that this specific feeling means she has to pee. Only once she recognizes the feeling can you get her to go where you want her to go. It’s why poop training and pee training never align; they’re two different feelings your dog needs to learn. (This is the same with toddlers and why it’s a fool’s errand to teach a too-young kiddo to use the toilet because this system hasn’t come online yet.)
What if your dog’s interoceptive awareness is weaker? Just like in humans, there’s huge variability in how effective each sense is. So, if your dog has any degree of interoceptive dysfunction, she isn’t great at reading the cues her internal organs give her brain.
She might not have a predictable response to pain.
It might be incredibly difficult to potty train this pup. (Or, conversely, with a heightened sense, you might be amazed at how easy potty training was.)
A dog with interoceptive dysfunction might never feel full–or never hungry, depending on if it’s over- or under-responsive.
These dogs (and, ahem, humans) can have trouble regulating stress, aggression, obsessions, and so on.
Interoceptive dysfunction isn’t a medical diagnosis, but if your dog experiences any–or many–of these challenges and doesn’t have another underlying health condition, it might be worth a conversation with your vet.
Vestibular
This system keeps your dog oriented in space. What does that mean?
Inside your dog’s inner ear (and yours, too!) is a series of structures that help your dog maintain balance, detect and direct movement, stabilize their eye gaze, and more.
Your dog’s sense of balance and spatial orientation comes from the vestibular system.
What does that look like in practice? Well, it keeps your dog from falling, tripping, and crashing. (Zoomies notwithstanding!)
This hidden sense is extra tricky because it can become dysfunctional for all sorts of reasons like taking certain medications, stroke, brain tumor, nutritional deficiencies, and even chronic ear infections.
The symptoms are pretty difficult, too, like vertigo, nausea and vomiting, involuntary eye movements, loss of coordination, and so on.
Obviously, if your dog is displaying any of these symptoms, it’s critical to first rule out underlying medical conditions. If everything is normal and your dog is still wobbly or uncoordinated or dizzy, it could be vestibular dysfunction. Sometimes this can come and go. In other cases, you might have to manage your environment pretty carefully.
Proprioception
This is my favorite of the three hidden senses in dogs. (And it’s my favorite in us humans, too!)
The proprioceptive system provides a super unique function: It connects your muscles and joints to your brain and helps your brain control your body and determine force.
That’s a little confusing, so let’s look at an example. Say you’re playing fetch with your dog. You pull your arm back and throw the ball. Your dog’s proprioreceptive system kicks into gear, connecting his eyes to his muscles and joints so that he knows which direction to run and how fast.
In humans, it’s like sitting at a busy intersection waiting to turn. Your proprioceptive system connects what your eyes are seeing to your foot to press the gas pedal and your arms to turn your steering wheel.
The receptors for this system are located in muscles, joints, and tendons. So, dogs with injuries that affect those parts of the body may have proprioceptive dysfunction. Likewise, this system helps control your dog’s sense of balance, posture, and coordination, but it’s distinct from the vestibular system, which resides only in the inner ear.
Proprioceptive dysfunction can look like clumsiness, lack of coordination, using too much (or too little) force to complete an action, and so on.
So, why do the hidden senses in dogs matter at all? Especially since they’re hidden?
To badly paraphrase Maya Angelou: When we know better, we are obligated to do better.
Understanding these hidden senses is crucial for meeting our dogs’ needs in a well-rounded way.
As a side story: My daughter has a sensory processing disorder and needs a ton of help with many of her sensory systems. Until we understood what was going on, though, it was challenging to give her the supports that were the most beneficial. Once we knew and understood what was going on, we were able to implement useful tools and practices. (BTW, we gave a presentation to her class at school to help her classmates understand what was going on, too, and you can view that here if you think it might be helpful!)
So, if you notice your dog struggles with any sensory issues at all–think: dislikes some types of touch, trips and falls or is uncoordinated, gets overstimulated easily–consider if there might be some type of sensory dysfunction.
Then ask how best you can support that sensory struggle. And, for anyone who is dysregulated, as occupational therapists are fond of saying: When in doubt, prop it out!
That means giving proprioceptive input, i.e. heavy work. It’s one of the ways to regulate the entire system.
What does proprioceptive input look like for our dogs?
- Walking on unstable surfaces,
- navigating obstacles,
- using equipment like balance discs, or
- wearing a weighted pack on your daily walk. We use this Kurgo pack with Stola (we LOVE it and have had it for YEARS) with cans of corn. Pretty soon she’s going to upgrade to a 2-pound hand weight on each side to increase the resistance.
In conclusion…
I thought about breaking this post into three, one for each sense, but I didn’t know if anyone would sustain an interest for as long as I tend to nerd out on this stuff, so we’ll consider this our overview! If you want to learn more, let me know, and I’ll try to work it in soon.
Otherwise, I’m curious: Did you know about these three hidden senses in dogs–and in humans? What questions are you left with? Do you see any possible relationship to your dog and your dog’s behavior? I’d love to know in the comments!
And, if you enjoyed this post, you’ll probably LOVE my book For the Love of Dog, which you can pre-order for only a couple more weeks!! Snag your copy on Amazon, Bookshop.org, or anywhere you prefer to buy books!
