Dogs and Sweat

My first instinct was to suggest the tongue, but of course this is not sweating – it's cooling through the evaporation of saliva. Fortunately this wasn't my question.

DaveP has argued on the Forum that dogs also sweat through their noses. This appears to be true, although the consensus seems to be that it's mainly through the paws.

One source that does mention the nose is Science Questions with Surprising Answers, with Dr. Christopher S. Beard: "most of a dog's sweat glands are located on the pads of its feet and on its nose."

The LiveScience website starts off by saying "Dogs actually sweat through their paws", but does go on to say that they "also have sweat glands in their noses, but ... they're not necessarily for cooling purposes".

The sweat glands are apparently what makes a dog's nose wet. I read somewhere, once upon a time, that dogs kept their noses wet by licking them; and indeed, since (as LiveScience informs us) "a damp nose better attracts scent molecules to the olfactory center", this would seem to have much the same effect.

When I googled "dogs sweat" – before I added the word 'nose' – it was hard to find any site that mentioned the nose. The American Kennel Club, for example, says that "Dogs do sweat, mainly through the glands in their paw pads." But it goes on to say that dogs have two types of sweat glands. The merocrine glands are in their paws, and function in a similar way to human sweat glands; but the apocrine glands are all over the dog's body. They release pheromones, which help dogs to identify each other by scent.

So there you have it: the correct answer to this question is "all over their bodies".