Prodigal Dog

April 27 2020

When the prodigal dog reappears

from her regular morning odyssey

investigating the neighbourhood,

her adopted sister, the homebody

sniffs her top-to-bottom and paw-to-paw,

tail whipsawed and ears perked-up
in bright-eyed excitement.

Like a forensic exam

she reconstructs her itinerary

by means of smell.

How much she can tell

with just her nose,

an entire universe of scent

that is closed to us humans.

One day, I should attach a small camera

to the wandering dog

so I, too, can share in her adventures;

where she pokes-in her nose,

when she rolls in who-knows-what,

and just which cat

she faces-off with.

The other dogs

in her entourage,

the garbage she interrogates.

To live the life of a dog

unburdened by thought or fear

or rumination.

How refreshing

such an unreflective act of being would feel,

plodding along in the now

nose to the ground.

She returns

and we greet like she's been gone for years.

She has stories to tell,

and I would sit and listen

if only I could hear.

My 2 dogs and I live in the country a long way from the road, which itself is not much travelled. And they're not the sort of dogs who would stray very far from home or run away. Which means that they have free reign: the can be out when they want, untied and unfenced. Mostly, they hang out at the neighbours' and play with the other dogs. I suspect there is a lot of sleeping going on, especially when there's warm sun. But I don't really know: they're on their own; they get to fully inhabit their dogginess.

My first dog, Skookum, has always been very much an outdoor dog. From the day Rufus joined us a a pup, she has been fascinated by her older counterpart: sniffing her avidly, climbing all over her, inciting her to play. So when Skookum returns from her wanderings, Rufus rouses herself from her favourite couch and sniffs her all over, as avidly as when she was a puppy: endlessly fascinated and informed by smells of which I have absolutely no inkling.

We rely on sight. We're OK with sound. But both are of the moment. While smell has a temporal aspect: it lingers; it decays; it evolves. So smell exists across time as well as space. This is a dimension of sensory experience we miss.

I'm very grateful I can give my dogs this kind of freedom. And I love seeing Rufus' undisguised excitement. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, one couldn't do much better than coming back as a Labrador Retriever!