Lyla and her nose remember

Emma and I have returned from a “walk” in the woods – for us it was a more of a race, up and down our steep hills, splashing through streams, crunching in the fallen leaves – and as usual when we returned to the warmth of our house we fell dead asleep. Fif (Friend I Follow) was stretched out on the couch drinking a potent-smelling tea and reading a book. I heard her mention to Ef (Emma's Friend) later that evening that my feet were still running as I dreamed in front of the cozy fire.

Here's Emma (on the left) and me taking a short break.

But it wasn’t rabbits or squirrels I was chasing in my dreams. It was memories from last summer. My feet probably were twitching because much of the trip I was pretty agitated. But I’ve already described how there were strange dogs and new dog smells everywhere we went and how much they disturbed my sense of well-being. What I may not have mentioned yet was some of the other amazing and sometimes disturbing smells, sounds and sensations.

The very first night we stayed in a motel where we had to get in a very small room before we arrived at our room with the bed. Fif pushed a button on a wall and suddenly my tummy shifted violently as the floor of the tiny room pushed at my feet. Later, when we went back outside, we had to enter the tiny room again and this time my tummy went up to my backbone and for just an instant I thought my feet had left the floor. I actually handled all this very well, particularly as there were strange people pressed all around and I surely didn’t want to upchuck on anyone’s shoes, especially since they kept telling me and Fif how beautiful I was. So I put on my best grin and after two or three times got quite used to the funny sensation.

Fif and me and my incredible nose.

It appears that humans cannot smell, see or hear much of what we dogs do. For example, I could smell where all the people who were in that tiny room that lurched my tummy had been that day. But, I could also smell where they had been for the past several days. The  odors coming from their shoes was quite overwhelming, but their clothing also reeked of everything from food smells to gasoline to other people and things they had come close to in the past few days. I could pick out big random odors of dogs, suitcases, car tires (which smell of much more than rubber) and so forth. But since I can smell thousands of times better than a human I could also smell, for example, if a certain human’s suitcase contained clean clothes and/or dirty clothes. If the clothes were clean I could tell if they had been washed in detergent with or without fragrance. If they were dirty (much more interesting) I could tell if they had food stains, had been worn on the beach, fishing or horseback riding. I could tell if the person had had sexual relations recently or been smoking. And on and on.

I don’t mess around with computers, but here is something Fif said to have my readers refer to if you want to learn more about how my world while traveling was so overpoweringly full of smell.

(This article is by Peter Tyson, former editor in chief of Nova Online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-sense-of-smell.html. Alexandra Horowitz’s book, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know is cited in the article. That book went with us on our journey last summer and was referred to many times.)

Here are just a few of the big and little smells I encountered during our six-and-a-half week’s journey:

Water– lakes (some so big I couldn’t see across them); streams, rivers (both dry and flooded); ponds; lakes; puddles; the salty ocean (which I wasn’t too thrilled about); rain; snow; and water with lots of different chemical stuff in it in motels, houses and restrooms.

This was Shell Lake in Wisconsin and in the direction I'm looking we were told that
black bears had been romping on the beach a couple of nights previously.
Do you think I could smell them?

Food – this of course is a huge category, but some highlights include the delicious smells of food Fif was eating and I usually got to sample (I even got my own personal hamburger on a number of occasions); items I consider food but Fif steered me away from, such as cow and horse poop at a fairgrounds where we walked; odors of food wafting down motel hallways or seeping through walls from the units around us; and smells of my dry dog kibble, which wasn’t all that appealing until about the third day on the road.

Air – I would venture to say that humans don’t pay much attention to the smell of air, unless it is really bad air. But to a dog air is the avenue to every other odor. There is the smell of indoor air and outdoor air, the smell of air that has traveled over water and air that has come from mountains and from forests and across deserts. Sometimes air smells of impending storms. The air in our van had vast and enormous smells and I even heard Fif say she was getting sick of the smell of moldy bread and dirty clothes. Several times I got to smell museum air. In one museum there was a “man” dressed in a military uniform. After he didn’t move even when I put my nose on his leg I realized he wasn’t a real human. But the clothes he wore had been somewhere very scary. I could smell human fear on the clothes, which I could also tell were very old.

People – every single human I’ve ever seen or met has a unique smell. That is why if I get separated from Fif on a woods walk at the farm I can easily pick out her trail and find her in a flash. She says she has watched me track her and even when I’m in sight of her I don’t look up, just keep my nose to the ground and fly along. I at least attempt to catalog people smells and that really took some doing as we traveled. No sooner would I store away a smell than we would be on the road and never see that person again. Sometimes, though, we would stay somewhere a couple of days and I was much happier because my smell memory could be useful.

Dogs – as mentioned before, they are without number. And, as with people, each has a distinct odor. The only two dogs I got to continue an association with after first smell was when we visited a family in Bakersfield. At first when I was let loose in a small back yard with very tall walls I criss-crossed the yard at top speed, frantically sucking up thousands of smells. I even ran across (only once) a very spongy thing that later turned out to be a tarp across a swimming pool. Since we were there for three days I eventually just got very curious about the other two dogs who obviously lived there. I wanted to meet them (and then decide whether to eat them or just be friends), but I wasn’t scared of them like I was of so many others. Unfortunately, Fif and her friends decided not to risk an encounter (something about one dog being old – I knew that – and the other being small – I knew that too.

These children are searching for prairie dogs in a "town" the critters built in a park in
North Dakota. Their homes are in holes -- I could have shown them exactly where to look!

Other animals – again, without number. Some were very familiar – raccoons, skunks, opossums, snakes, and so forth. When we camped at a big lake the ranger warned Fif not to let me loose because there were porcupines. She showed us a photo of a dog with hundreds of quills in his poor nose – I bet that nose had some smelling issues for awhile. At one motel there were wild bunnies everywhere. I could not only smell them constantly, but I could smell where their dens were and tell you how many babies were hunched inside. At another motel many elk grazed all night on the lawn in front. I was particularly interested in their droppings, but again wasn’t allowed to taste. Once while we were walking alone in a forest I stopped in my tracks and stared into the top of some trees. I didn’t bark, but was VERY quiet. Of course Fif looked up too and she quickly realized what I already knew. Something very big and black had been there pretty recently. We made a quick trip back to the van.

Motel rooms – loaded with odors! Humans and dogs and all the foods they eat, all the things they carry or wear, all the things they do. Because we always stayed in rooms other dogs had inhabited, some odors were so strong even Fif commented on them. The first two or three nights I had a great urge to pee on the carpet where others had committed the same sin. This, despite the fact that I have NEVER used our house for a bathroom. Fif reprimanded me sternly about that urge. Eventually, she got the idea to spray each room with some smelly stuff, saying it covered up the odors. Well, for her maybe it did. For me it just added another layer.

This is when we visited the cemetery at Shell Lake
Wisconsin, looking for Fif's great-grandmother's grave.
We did not find it but you can tell I enjoyed this outing!

Random things – graveyards – we visited many, as Fif realized they are usually vacant and great for walks. You would be amazed at what odors I smelled there! At one I was tempted to do some digging next to a headstone, but Fif blocked that impulse. Long roads in the countryside where we walked were very rich in odors, from fertilizers for the fields to birds flying around, to corn and wheat and hay growing, to myriad small creatures burrowing and climbing and crawling. I even took time to stop and smell the flowers.