Inside of a Dog_ What Dogs See, Smell, and Know - Alexandra Horowitz [99]
We have already seen that it is smelly; that it is well peopled with people. On further consideration, we can add: it is close to the ground; it is lickable. It either fits in the mouth or it doesn't. It is in the moment. It is full of details, fleeting, and fast. It is written all over their faces. It is probably nothing like what it is like to be us.
It is close to the ground …
One of the most conspicuous features of the dog is one of the most conspicuously overlooked when contemplating their view of the world: their height. If you think that there is little difference between the world at the height of an average upright human and that at the height of an average upright dog—one to two feet—you are in for a surprise. Even putting aside for a moment the difference in sound and smell close to the ground, being at a different height has profound consequences.
Few dogs are human-height. They are human-knee height. One might even say they are often underfoot. We are magnificently obtuse when it comes to imagining even the simple fact of their being less than half our height. Intellectually we know that dogs are not at our height, yet we set up interactions such that the height difference is a constant problem. We put things "out of reach" of dogs, only to be frustrated by their attempts to get them. Even knowing that dogs like greeting us at eye level, we typically do not bend down. Or, bending down just far enough to allow them to reach our faces with a leap, we may get annoyed when they then leap. Jumping up is the direct result of desiring to get to something one needs to jump up to reach.
Scolded enough for jumping up, dogs happily find there is plenty of interest underfoot. There are, for instance, lots of feet. Smelly feet: the foot is a good source of our signature odors. We tend to sweat pedally when we are mentally taxed: stressed, or concentrating hard. Clumsy feet: sitting, we dangle them, but not with dexterity. They act as single units, with toes only existing as places between which extra odors may be discovered by a roving tongue.
If the foot smells so interesting, of course, then the way we treat them must be awfully frustrating: damned shoes. We cloister our odors. On the other hand, shoes left behind smell just like the person who had been in them, and they have the additional interest of carrying on their soles whatever you squishily stepped in outside. Socks are equally good carriers of our odor, hence the gaping holes that regularly appear in socks left bedside. On examination, each hole has been lovingly poked by the incisors of a dog with a sock in her mouth.
Besides feet, at dog height the world is full of long skirts and trouser legs dancing with every footfall of their wearer. The tight whirling motions the warp of a pant leg presents to a dog's eye must be tantalizing. Between their sensitivity to motion and their investigatory mouths, it is no wonder one can find one's pants being nipped by the dog at the end of your leash.
The world closer to the ground is a more odoriferous one, for smells loiter and fester in the ground, while they distribute and disperse on the air. Sound travels differently along the ground, too: hence birds sing at tree height, while ground dwellers tend to use the earth to communicate mechanically. The vibration of a fan on the floor might perturb a dog nearby; likewise, loud sounds bounce more loudly off the floor into resting dog ears.
The artist Jana Sterbak tried to capture a dog's-eye view by rigging a video camera to a girdle worn by Stanley, her Jack Russell terrier, and recording his perambulations along a frozen river and through Venice, the "city of doges" (pun probably intended). The result is a manic, jumbled rush of sights, the world akilter and the image never calm. At fourteen inches above the ground, Stanley's visual world is a glimpse of his olfactory world: what catches his olfactory interest