An Awful Fine Smelling

It is one of the strangest things in the world to me: my dog’s love of all things smelly.

I can understand her love of fresh pizza when it comes through the front door on a Friday night.  I get why she scurries under the kitchen table before we have even sat down at it ourselves.  She loves straight-out-of-the-oven meatloaf even more than I do.  But six-day old leftover spaghetti that I probably should have thrown out, and would have, if not for conscience and the fact that I haven’t gotten to the grocery store in seven days?  It doesn’t seem to matter to my dog.  It’s all good to her.  She pokes her wet nose out from her hiding spot, pushing back the edge of the tablecloth to catch a whiff. 

When we go on a walk, she cranes her neck left to right, sticking her snout upward to where only she knows, because I can’t see what she’s smelling.  But the way her paws start to dance, her rear end jigs, she looks like a kid in a candy shop whose just been told to pick out as much as she wants.  I think she’s smelling the wind carrying the fragrance of the pine trees lining the street up ahead.  Dogs are so good at appreciating what they can’t even see.  Fifty yards down the road and around a bend we haven’t even reached yet is my neighbor walking her dog.  They’re coming towards us, and we’re going towards them, but only the dogs know it.  They smell the scent of a friend not far off and can hardly contain their joy.  O to live like a dog!

She will stop for the smallest piece of brown leaf that has been stepped on and broken apart in dryness.  She will get herself caught on the prickly of a rose bush, though the roses themselves have long gone away for winter.  She will not, will not, pass up a dead squirrel.  I honestly don’t know who stops for a rodent flattened to the pavement. She gently breathes in and out all around what is no more, like she is honoring a fallen comrade. 

When my neighbor and her dog finally catch up to us, she will immediately go around to the backside of her fellow canine to see what good smell is coming from their butt!  In any other company, my dog would be shamed for impropriety.  But out here, the whole world is her domain, where every sight, every smell—the good, the bad, and the ugly—are all signs of life to be praised.

Later this evening, after the turkey has all been packed away in Tupperware, I will sit down to recount the days blessings, and there she will be, my dog, at my feet, running her nose up and down my pant leg.  Does she think I’ve stored a piece of pumpkin pie in my pocket for later?  No. Amazingly, mercifully, she has found her favorite smell of all.

“The earth belongs to God and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it…and God has declared it all good,” says the Good Book.  If you don’t believe me, come take my dog for a walk.  You won’t be able to come back home without saying, Amen Amen Amen.