A Dog’s Sense of Smell

Part 1 - Reading the Newspaper.

My dog reads her version of a newspaper.

Every morning Winter, my girlfriend and I go for a half hour walk through the neighborhood. Winter stops and smells the same spots every time.

Some she sniffs at briefly, like the corner of particular lawn or the third picket on a particular fence. Other spots, there are two or three on our walk, she smells for a long time. The chain link fence post as we enter the park is of particular interest. As Winter moves from region to region on the post picking up all the new smells from the last 24 hours, she usually smells deeply and huffs a few times, lips flapping with each exhale as if to say, “interesting, very interesting…”

I call it reading the newspaper because as we walk around the neighborhood she can smell who’s been coming and going. She picks up the same people and animals every day and some newcomers. The park fence post is like the “opinion” and “letters to the editor” pages because just about every dog in the area uses that particular spot to leave their mark. Through the scent left by the others, Winter can pick up on what they’ve been eating and what type of mood they are in.

So on our walk every morning, just like when I pick up the paper, Winter gets to read what the animals in her world have been up to.