St. Louis Smells

“Wind's from the south today.”

When we toured the big Budweiser plant here last December we realized that the slightly sweet odor we occasionally smell in our neighborhood emanates from the brewery, a mixture of fermented grains with strong overtones of hops. The brewery is only a mile from our house. It vents massive amounts of this non-toxic gas every hour. We only smell it when the wind is from the south.

It's a good clean smell. Nobody complains. It's also a reassuring smell in a time of economic uncertainty since it means beer is still being brewed by one of St. Louis' biggest employers.

Most of the time I'm not aware of smelling anything. The scientific explanation for this is fairly simple. First, compared to other mammals, humans have a very puny nose. Second, we have evolved so that sight is our primary contact with the world. We've got eyes exquisitely well suited to interpret everything we encounter, so smelling the world takes a back seat. Third, our olfactory system stops smelling things quite quickly. Even though the chemicals for the odor are still there we forget we can smell them. The result is that human beings are not very discriminating in the olfactory department.

Because we live in a world mostly encountered by sight, we're unreliable reporters of smells. Some people are better than others at recognizing and describing what they smell. Most people typically just categorize smells as pleasant or unpleasant. To describe a specific smell we refer to common experience rather than the smell itself. Something smells like rotting fish or like a rose. Descriptions of complex specific smells are elusive. No one can describe a specific perfume, for example, without sounding hilariously vague: “violets, sugar and a hint of musk” does not conjure up anything for me.

I bring this up because of an incident this week involving our dog, Joli. First thing every morning while it's still dark I let Joli out into our yard. She's gone 2-3 minutes then comes back to eat her breakfast. On Tuesday I realized about 10 minutes had passed and she had not come back. I was concerned enough to go out to see what was up.

I saw her at the foot of the steps crouched in a typical border collie “stare.” This stance always means she has spotted something she believes is potential prey. I went down to her. In a group of flower pots overflowing with annuals was a small possum. I'd seen two in our yard before so I wasn't that surprised. Joli's nose was within a foot of the possum. The possum was cornered. It was hissing. Joli was so interested in this small animal that she growled at me to let me know how unhappy she was at being told to get inside and let the possum go on its way.

After about 15 minutes I let Joli out again to see what she would do. She immediately went to the spot where she had confronted the possum. She took a minute or two to investigate that area then set off on a complete patrol sniffing every inch of our yard and garden. She seemed sure the possum was still around. Its persistent odor told her to keep searching.

For the next two days she repeated this very complete search every morning to no avail. Only when there was no residual scent left was she finally convinced the possum was gone.

As chance would have it the Times Sunday Book Review this past week featured Inside of a Dog: What dogs see smell & know by Alexandra Horowitz, a psychology professor at Barnard College, Columbia University. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/books/review/Schine-t.html?_r=1&em

Professor Horwitz contends that we can only discover what our canine companions are thinking by trying to understand how they experience the world, their umwelt as it were. The key to understanding a dog is to realize that dogs primarily sniff the world. “As we see the world, the dog smells it. The dog's universe is a stratum of complex odors. The world of scents is at least as rich as the world of sight.” http://insideofadog.com/

A dog not only has a much larger area in their nose and brain devoted to smelling, they constantly renew the air in their noses so they continue to smell things long after we humans can sense no odor at all. Recent research into the mechanics of sniffing shows it to be a complex phenomena that allows a dog to exchange the air in its nostrils without inhaling or exhaling. Humans are just not very well equipped to sniff.

For me St. Louis is the strong smell of hops on a south wind; for Joli it's the subtile scent of opossum.

Bear

Last Saturday we drove an hour west of St. Louis to pick up Bear at a McDonald's along the highway. Bear is a three-year-old Border Collie who had just been plucked from a private dog shelter by the dedicated, kind-hearted souls at Mo-Kan Border Collie Rescue. Robin, the woman behind his rescue, found out that Bear had spent virtually his whole life to date in the kennel. He apparently has a minor thyroid problem, but is otherwise healthy.

Merry joined Border Collie Rescue only a short time ago. A local volunteer came to our house to check it out and determined we would be appropriate as foster humans for dogs waiting for adoption. I was somewhat surprised that a dog was placed with us so soon. We debated for a few days whether we were ready, then decided that now was as good a time as ever. Thus, we found ourselves at the McDonald's transferring a somewhat shocked black and white dog to a crate in the back of Merry's Subaru.

Our first challenge was introducing Bear to Joli. We decided to begin by walking them together around the neighborhood before letting Bear in the house. This was a good plan and it would have worked, too, if the handle on the leash we used hadn't broken the first second as Merry got Bear out of the car. This led to a scramble to hold onto Bear while a different leash was located. Then it was off around the block. To our pleasant surprise he walked very well on a lead, even though he got tangled up a few times. As our blood pressures returned to normal, we seemed off to a pretty good start.

We kept a close watch on him in the house. Here's an excerpt from Merry's first report back to Robin:

“He is a pretty good boy in the house. We've interrupted him marking in the house a couple times. He mainly wants to stay close. He wants lots of pats and scratches and will lay on his back for tummy rubs. He is not very civilized. He knows sit pretty well, and comes pretty well when he remembers he should be coming when called. We are working on sit and lay down. Stay is out of the question so far. We are working also on wait...to come out of the crate or to go through the door. We don't think he knows his name yet.”

We've had him a week now. Merry works with him every day. We see small bits of civilization becoming part of his behavior set. For example, I was quite surprised on last Sunday to discover that Bear had not played much with toys. I threw him a tennis ball and he just looked puzzled. I tried a squeaky toy. Same result. So we had him watch as we played with Joli and made sure there were toys in the yard when the dogs were out. Here's Merry's report to Robin on his progress:

“Yesterday outside he discovered the big ball with the rope. He watched Joli run for it and after a while, when he got the chance, he grabbed it and ran around with it. Tore around! He is an incredibly graceful runner and jumper. Really light on his feet.”

Perhaps the most interesting challenge could be called “Bear's Liminal Problem.” The most difficult time for Bear (and us) is when he needs to make a transition from one way of being (say in his crate) to another (loose in the house), or vice versa. Here's Merry again:

“Anytime we go out or upstairs or downstairs, he needs prep, and it is best if Joli is not in the scene. For instance, going up to go in his crate for the night has been hard. He ran by the crate, ran into this room, that room. Last night I tried coming upstairs with him and not going straight to the crate. [lightbulb!] We hung out on the couch nearby, him getting lots of pats and scratches, generally making out. Then when I asked him to get into the crate, he popped right in!”

I experienced this problem first hand a few days ago. I just got home from work and as is my habit hitched up Joli for her evening walk. We've been doing this virtually every day for at least ten years, so I was on automatic pilot. I opened the door, let Joli out and suddenly Bear was past me and out the door. A second before he had been nowhere around. Joli blocked him and I grabbed him by the neck fur. He's so strong he pulled me to my knees before I could stop him. Ouch.

This event and the general problem Bear has with learning how to gracefully make transitions put me in mind of how anyone learns to go from one mental state to the next without being utterly confused. While we are on the threshold between two mental states we are particularly open and vulnerable. There exists a fairly large body of literature on liminality in philosophy, anthropology and neuroscience. I never thought it might apply to dog training.

As for Bear, he will be at our house for another week at least. Then he's scheduled to go to another foster home. I'm off for a week hearing cases in Cape Girardeau. Merry will stay here and work with Bear some more. You can check on the status of Bear by looking at his bio found at http://www.mokanbcrescue.org/info/dogs/dogs-available.html.

For those of you who love BC's and want to see how Merry first got interested in rescue, check out one of the very best BC sites on the web at http://www.theshepherdsdog.com.

One final note: I want to thank everyone who responded to my cry for help in last week's post. I needed the boost. I've decided to follow the advice of several of you [Thank you George, Merry, Kate, Scott & Glenn] and start a blog archive on the web. I've signed up with Blogger and by next week I expect to have the archive ready for public viewing.