If your dog seems suddenly interested in a spot of your body, you’d be wise to visit your physician. Such stories are truly amazing and a little terrifying. This ability has led to cancer detection in otherwise seemingly healthy individuals. All dogs, not just those who are trained, seem to have the ability to smell dying cells, and they are as drawn to that odor as to the dead squirrel in the woods. For a dog to be able to pick out the scent that the trainer wants to know about amidst so many other distractions floating through the air is humbling, to say the least.
Horowitz also studies the training of pups to become search and rescue, cancer detectors, and police assistants. It’s like binge-watching TV shows, only more intellectually satisfying. Imagine how fascinating a walk in the woods must be. An animal was here, where did it go? Is it ill, young, edible, or dangerous? Is it dead? Combined with their sight and hearing, also both exceptional, dogs’ noses provide them with unending entertainment. To a dog, odors are not just interesting, they are floating histories, describing who, what, where and why. And though it is not difficult to smell, as she says, it is difficult to describe, because it evokes sensations and responses in us that go beyond words. Dogs are drawn to it, but humans are repelled by it.
She abstains from rolling in it, but she notes the power the scent of death holds on us. Sweet and foul together-not the kind of smell that is appropriate for a squirrel who recently was chattering and racing up trees.” When she spies her dog over-interested in something, and making the motion of rolling in it, she pulls him away, and studies the remains of a squirrel: With great humor, insight, and obvious devotion to all things canine, Horowitz dives right in, barely hesitating to dip her nose into places where only a dog would go. Is it even possible for us, with our puny, downward facing feature, to come close to experiencing a dog’s vast smelly world? And, do we really want to experience such a bombardment of scents, some of which are nauseating to our delicate senses? But here, she turns the tables and asks not only how dogs’ sense of smell works and why, but how we humans can attain the same level of olfactory expertise. Alexandra Horowitz is a leading researcher in dog cognition, as proved by her bestselling book INSIDE OF A DOG.
0 kommentar(er)
