Inside of a Dog_ What Dogs See, Smell, and Know - Alexandra Horowitz [104]
Smell tells time. The past is represented by smells that have weakened, or deteriorated, or been covered. Odors are less strong over time, so strength indicates newness; weakness, age. The future is smelled on the breeze that brings air from the place you're headed. By contrast, we visual creatures seem to look mostly in the present. The dogs' olfactory window of what is "present" is larger than our visual one, including not just the scene currently happening, but also a snatch of the just-happened and the up-ahead. The present has a shadow of the past and a ring of the future in it.
In this way, olfaction is also a manipulator of time, for time is changed when represented by a succession of odors. Smells have a lifetime: they move and they expire. For a dog, the world is in flux: it waves and shimmers in front of his nose. And he must keep sniffing—as if we had to repeatedly look at and attend to the world for a constant image to remain on our retinae and in our minds—for the world to be continually apparent to him. This explains so much familiar behavior: your dog's constant sniffing, for one,* and also, perhaps, his seemingly divided attention, which races from sniff to sniff: objects only continue to exist as long as an odor is emitted and he inhales. While we can stand in one place and take in a view of the world, dogs must do much more moving themselves in order to absorb it all. No wonder they seem distracted: their present is constantly moving.
The odor of objects thus holds the data of passing minutes and hours. As they note the hours and days, dogs can note the seasons through smell. We on occasion notice the passing of a season as marked by the smell of blooming flowers, decaying leaves, air about to burst into rain. Mostly, though, we feel or see the seasons: we feel the welcome sun on our winter-paled skin; we glance out the window on a bright spring day and never remark, What a beautiful new smell! Dogs' noses stand in for our sight and skin sense. The air of spring brings odors in every sniff-ful remarkably different from the air of winter: in its moisture or heat; the amount of rotting death or blooming life; in air traveling on breezes or emanating from the earth.
Navigating the world of human time with their expanded window of the present, dogs function a little ahead of us; they are preternaturally sensitive, a shade faster. This accounts for their skill at catching the tossed ball midair and also for some of the ways they seem out of sync with us, some of the ways we can't get them to do what we want. When dogs don't "obey," or have difficulty learning something we want them to, it is often that we are not reading them well: we don't see when their behavior has begun.* They are lunging toward the future a step before us.
… It is written all over their faces …
She has a smile. It's one of the panting faces she puts on. Not every panting face is a smile, but every smile is a panting face. A slight fold in her lip—it would be a dimple on a human face—adds to the smile. Her eyes can be saucers (engaged) or half-open slits (contented). And her eyebrows and eyelashes exclaim.
Dogs are ingenuous. Their bodies do not deceive, even if they sometimes cajole or trick us. Instead the dog's body seems to map straight to his internal state. Their joy when you return home or when you approach them is translated directly through their tails. Their concern is plotted by the lift of an eyebrow. Pump's smile is not an actual grin, but that deep lip retraction that gives a glimpse of teeth is used in a ritualized way, part of a communication with us.
You can tell a lot about a dog by observing how he carries his head. Mood, interest, and attention are writ in capital letters from the altitude of the head, the lay of the ears, and the radiance of the eyes. Think of a dog prancing around in front of other dogs, tail and head high, with a cherished or stolen toy: given dogs' usual way of negotiating around each other, this is a clear, intentional gesture—of something