Re: "Day 5: Get Up Close And Personal"

Yesterday I went out for a bit of showshoeing with my dog, Payton. It was a joy for us both, since she had spent days in the kennel while we were away and it was a special time to go out. I noticed how she stopped to sniff each footprint in the snow. She followed the rabbit who had crossed the yard and rested under the shelter of our former Christmas tree before heading on to protection from the fox and hawk in the warrens to the east. Payton tracked the squirrel who jumped from the ground to the roof of the dog house which belonged to our long-gone beagles and which I relocated to the woods some years ago in the thought that some animal (if only pillbugs) might use it.

I wondered why she does this. She's not a hound, bred for hunting by scent. And she knows she's not going to get to chase the quarry. I suppose she does it for the same reason the joke says dogs do other things: "Because they can!"

When I consider the world from her point of view, I'm amazed at how different it is! The differences would seem to reflect our differing evolutionary origins. Visual acuity in dogs is 0.4 times that of people, 0.67 times that of horses, and twice that of cats. When it comes to smell, things are harder to measure, but dogs have around 220 million olfactory receptors, roughly 40 times the number found in humans. Her chemosensory world is much more alive than mine, particularly when it comes to smelling the volatile organic compounds that indicate "MEAT!"

A recent experiment documented that dogs could correctly diagnose (sniff out?) bladder cancer in urine samples 41% of the time, compared to an expected 14% if the results were random. Janice has noticed that every morning Payton smells our breath. We've decided it's her way of checking to see how we're doing. This rich sensory world also explains the embarrassing (for humans) habit dogs have of going immediately for the crotch of a newcomer in the household. It's just canine homeland security, checking the identity of the visitor!

In yesterday's reading, Barry Lopez says, "The quickest door...leads to the smallest room, by knowing the name each thing is called. The door that leads to the cathedral is marked by a hesitancy to speak at all, rather to encourage by example a sharpness of the senses. If one speaks it should only be to say, as well as one can, how wonderfully all this fits together...." I guess what I'm aiming to say is this: It's a deep privilege to share the world with another being whose experience of it is so different from my own!