SNIFFING MY WAY ALONG
Maggie only comes to visit me when my son and his wife Kathy are out of town. When she can’t go along, she is much happier staying with me than staying in a kennel. When she is here she mostly sleeps. Her great joy is being taken for a walk on a leash. I don’t think she particularly likes the leash but she is so used to it that it doesn’t bother her. She is leashed so that she won’t chase into the woods after some animal and so that when we pass other dogs being taken for a walk she won’t get in a fight. Why she stiffens and the hair rises on her neck with some dogs is a mystery to me. I often wonder what Maggie is thinking and how she thinks. Since she can’t speak English I don’t know what she is thinking. She does make a kind of mewing whining sound when scared by thunder or distant loud sounds, and seems to coo when I’m rubbing her back, barks a staccato bark when excited and about to go on a walk. She is communicating with me but I don’t understand.
But when we are walking along up Jones Mountain in silence and I am wondering about something (walking seems to enhance wondering) and she is trotting along beside me, the only thing she seems to be concentrating on is smells. She will stop at a bush and sniff it carefully and then satisfied trot on. I assume that dogs and probably other animals leave their scent here and there as a message for other dogs. On a walk Maggie doesn’t pee all at once but a little bit here and a little bit there. I assume she is leaving some message for other dogs to decipher. But I know for sure that Maggie and I, companions for a little while, are living in completely different worlds. Hers is a world of scents and mine is a world of silent thoughts. We are as far apart as we can be. And yet she seems to find my presence comforting as I find her presence.
But one of the things that I wonder about when walking with her is what life force embedded in her impels her along from the day she is born until the day she dies. Something within her, some gene, makes her more attracted to people, and only certain people more than others. She will burst into a spasm of delight and race around the room, sliding on the hardwood floor, whenever we meet up. Why? She is afraid of thunder. Why? She sniffs her way up the mountain. Why? She loves to be stroked on the back of her neck. Why? The back of the neck stroking I can empathize with because I would like that, too. In a way when stroking her neck I am stroking my own back because it feels good for me too.
But what impels her along in a doggy way. I am really curious because I have the feeling that the way I am impelled along in a human way is just the same. My feeling along in this post, is the same as my thoughts as I walk up the mountain. She is intent on deciphering all the information in dog pee in the same way that I am intent on figuring out what is going on around me. I am sniffing along in Maggie’s terms right now. But why?
Whatever it is is built into each of us. It is in our genetic makeup. I don’t like the smell of pee, Maggie does. It excites her. She doesn’t delight in figuring things out, I do. But why?
I guess it is survival of the species according to Darwin. But that is fine for him to say and doesn’t satisfy me at all. For me, and for Maggie, too, what is happening is that sniffing our way through life in our different ways makes us feel energized and fully alive. That is what each of us is feelign along to. But why?
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 