Stephen KuusistoODE TO A DOG'S NOSE*A dog's nose takes in the world like a child seeing a Cresh—animals, people, hay, friends, strangers, gifts, food, astonishment. Any dog's nose finds semantics in the fragrant spaces before it. Up hill and down we go, the blind guy and Labrador. The man hears a radio in a passing car. The dog smells the driver's fear stinks. The dog smells onions a block away. It goes without saying, the dog is more alive on the smelly planet than the man. In Graz, Austria, I opened a window in our hotel and Vidal poked his head out and scented blackbirds. He was like an old man savoring perfume with his eyes closed. Vidal's smell-joy was palpable. I wrote in my notebook: Spend all day with a dog's nose and try to imagine what's going on in there . Up hill and down we went, Vidal and I. Austrian Dachshunds and their portly owners in the park. I wrote in my notebook: New doors in a dog's psyche? Or have they always known these smells—know them from the canine genome? We went inside a mountain and navigated tunnels dug by the Nazis. I wondered if Vidal smelled the patina-smoke of misery still clinging to the damp stones. I wondered if there's a half life to the odor of fear. Odors of vulnerability; of losses; of luck… And dogs prancing through them… Would a dog know losses? Surely he'd smell them. One thinks of Hemingway's description of a dry fountain giving off the odor of death. Dogs smell everything as optimism. This is one of their secrets. One remembers Helen Keller who said: "No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit." Dog noses open new doorways.
*Previously published in Stephen Kuusisto's blog Planet of the Blind.
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