Sniffing Around Scent Work

And now, just for a change of pace, a bit of creative writing…

Sunday morning, I am up early walking the dogs before the heat sets in. They all get separate walks when I have time, as they all have different needs at this point in their lives. Astra goes last today.

Astra is one of my Lagotto Romagnolos, a breed which is prized for its ability to sniff out underground mushrooms, and she is true to her breed. Sniffing is her joy in life, and we take the walk at her pace. She chooses the direction, turning right, after checking the post at the end of the walk where all the dogs mark. Her choices are always very thoughtful, and sometimes I can see her tracking a previous critter’s path (dog or cat, I imagine, but maybe a possum or a crow) on the sidewalk or the grass. Her tracking mode is a very focused: linear sniffing, as opposed to her zig zagging around to explore.

This morning she is in more of a browsing mode, and she meanders on down the street, stopping occasionally to mark a spot by peeing.

Until we get to the big oak on the corner, where something catches her attention. She slows, becoming intent around the base of the tree. She sniffs in a circle, around the roots, pausing at one or two places, and then sniffs up the trunk as far as she can reach. She glances up and then goes back down to the roots and sniffs over to a twig on the ground, which she pauses at  for almost thirty seconds.

She picks her head up and considers the twig, then smells again, and briefly picks it up in her mouth. I wonder for a moment if she is trying to eat it, and consider asking her to drop it, but no, she is merely tasting it, and after a few seconds, she drops it, and having apparently reached the end of that story, we move on down the street.

I love watching her “read” these stories, and having spent a large part of the last nine years as a nose work trainer and judge watching dogs sniff and translating their actions , I consider myself pretty good at interpretation.

Here, I imagine, was the story of some kind of squirrel chase….perhaps a courtship, or a cat in pursuit of prey. There was a typical squirrel dance, as one or two squirrels spiraled around the tree, and eventually a climb upwards, and maybe, just maybe down again before another climb up…I am not sure what happened  involving that twig, but apparently it was a twist at the end of the tale or maybe that twig contained  a tantalizing detail.

Many people are unaware of the fact that dogs (and other animals) have a specialized organ for scent in the roof of their mouths, just behind their front teeth, the Jacobsen’s organ. This organ takes the scent on a fast track right to the olfactory center of the brain, so often when dogs appear to be licking or tasting, they are actually just trying to get a better fix on scent. I have seen cadaver dogs searching for a body in a river, swimming upstream and biting the water as they go, in order to catch the scent clues as to where the body lies.

Lagotti were bred to have lower prey drive, so that they would stay on task in the forest and not go off to chase squirrels when they should be hunting mushrooms. Yeti, my younger Lagotto, actually has quite a bit of prey drive, and I have had to work to get him to stop chasing the feral cats in the neighborhood. But for Astra, the actual scent is more important than the prey itself.

A few days ago we went out to one of my favorite little wilderness areas for a walk. This is a nature preserve out on the edge of the suburbs, with some lovely winding paths along a creek. I let Astra off leash so she can freely explore. She is good about returning if I call her back, so I am comfortable doing so.

We walk along the paths for a bit, finally turning out into a more open space just before the area ends and a housing development begins. Astra finds an area in the grass of particular interest and details it intently for a couple of minutes. I come up behind her and observe that the tall grass is slightly flattened. “Probably a deer slept there,” I say to myself.

Astra continues to sniff, and then moves off, and then very suddenly, there is the deer itself, moving through the brush. It’s a big lanky deer, but that is all I can observe about it before I see a flash of wolfy face and realize that a coyote must have been stalking the deer and we have interrupted it.

The coyote is huge, at least 50 pounds, and seems to have changed it’s focus from the deer to Astra, and starts in her direction, but then stops abruptly when it sees me, and after a fraction of second, changes direction again, going back after the deer.

If I could have heard Astra’s thoughts, I imagine they probably would have gone something like this;

“ooooh what an interesting smell here, something lay here for a bit, maybe four hours, AHHH, it had hoofs, rather large….how fascinating…. and then it got up….recently….hmmm… a few minutes ago? I wonder where it went, oh look, an interesting track, and hmmm what is that other smell….like a dog but not quite…and OOOOOPS!!!!! So SORRY SIR, DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE, DIDN’T MEAN TO INTERRUPT, I WILL JUST LEAVE YOU TO IT,  GOING BACK THIS WAY…..

Astra is no idiot, and with tail tucked,  runs as fast as she can down the watershed. I run after her, shouting “Astra here!” and after a few seconds, she realizes I am probably her best defense, and runs to me. I clip on the leash and we continue running down the trail, back the way we came, both of us panicked and shaken.

I might have missed this whole scene if I had been walking by myself. I would have strolled right by the deer, and then the coyote, likely without ever seeing either of them, and gone my way, ignorant of the drama that lay just to the side of the trail.

And although I guess this could have gone badly for us, I am grateful for the extra dimensions that Astra’s sniffing gives to our excursions. What is life without a little extra spice and drama?