Printable sheet
German shepherd in flowers sniffing the breeze as a butterfly flutters past its nose. A springtime printable for kids; download the free PDF today.
Printable sheet
Free for personal and educational use
Download PDFPrintA young German shepherd sitting among daisies and wildflowers, with pointed ears and a butterfly near its nose.
Pair bright flower colors with the shepherd's black and tan coat.
Close your eyes, smell a few flowers or spices and try to guess each one.
When a dog sniffs eagerly, it can take several short breaths every second.
In this picture, a German shepherd in flowers is probably smelling everything around it. To a dog, a meadow full of blossoms is like a library of scents. Every plant, every bug and every animal that wandered through leaves behind a trail the dog can read with its nose.
A dog's sense of smell is far more powerful than ours. People have about five or six million scent receptors, while a German shepherd can have more than two hundred million. The part of its brain that sorts out smells is also much larger compared with ours.
Its nose works in a special way, too. When a dog sniffs, the air splits into two paths: one goes to the lungs for breathing, and the other heads to an area used only for smelling. That lets dogs keep smelling while they breathe, and their two nostrils help them tell which direction a scent is coming from.
That is why German shepherds work as detection dogs at airports, in disaster zones and in searches for lost hikers. For any dog, a slow, sniffy walk matters as much as a run, because it tires out the brain and makes the dog happy.
