Being a new dog owner, I am wondering of dogs can smell the particular "odor of fear" or if they just sense distress in an owner they have been around for a long time.

To test this, I propose Tori, kari and Grant be subjected to fear-inducing situations, with a dog being conditioned to respond to the person afriad for a treat.

In round 1, T/K/G determine a trigger that causes complete irrational fear that they cannot control, and which ends immediately when the trigger is removed (by measuring heartbeat to assess response). For example, grant could be made to stick his feet in a bucket of water, with fish swimming around.

The dogs are first led to the MB without any fear stimulus, then the next, then finally the last MB with a fear response, and the dog is given a treat.

After a few rounds to condition the dog that "fear = treat", then let the dog be released from the opposite end of a room and see who it goes to. In the grant example, each MBer could be sitting with feet in a bucket, but only grant would be subjected to the fish. And as a control, grant wouldn't know in which round the fish would be added, as each MBer would be blindfolded.

I'd also have a thermal camera, heart monitor and any other measuring device to determine what really happens in the human body when a fear response is triggered.

An alternative to live testing would be sweat-soaked cloths- have each MBer wipe their brow during a fear exposure, then once with just physical exterion.

A bomb or drug dog from the police could be used to test for the smell of fear.

they hear racing hearts and smell the sweat so you could say they do