Dog’s blog: Sniffs and snorts
Serves Mom right for making me go to the kennels in the deep dark depths of winter. I came home sick.
Coughing. Kennel coughing… despite the fact that she had specifically had me inoculated against such nasties. Shame. Poor me.
Lay on the stoep looking baleful. Giving the odd snorts and coughs. Lapping up all the attention she lavished on me whenever I made some noise.
But all the love and attention did not last long. A buzzy thing flew into one of her bakkies of flowers. I snapped at it.
“Oi!” she yelled at me. “Watch out for the flowers.”
“Flowers? What flowers? Ooohhhh – those things there?”
Stuffed my nose into the little ones and had a good sniff.
She knows I like to sniff her flowers. I fancy the smell of that herby stuff too – except it’s a bit tickly sometimes.
First time I stuck my face into the pot she had words with me.
“Fudgie,” she said, “please don’t slobber in the thyme.”
Looked at her… thyme? “Time for what. Playing ball or walkies?”
“Silly woof,” she said, “that plant you’re snorting is thyme.”
Whatever! Some of the flowers smell good too. Like honey. Mom says it’s called alyssum.
Have to be careful though – sometimes stick my nose in there and surprise a bee. Have no intention of being zapped on the snout by one of those meanie critters.
Did you know – dogs have an awesome sense of smell. You humans only have around 5 million scent receptors.
But us dogs – hroof – we have between 125 to 300 million glands. Depending on what sort of a mutt – bloodhounds are top of the range – they have 300 million. Impressive hey?
Whilst our brains are only one-tenth the size of your human brains – the bit that controls the smell is 40 times larger than in humans.
That’s why we have wet noses too – to help us smell.
So when that sneaky Mom comes home pretending she’s just been shopping – I know when she’s fibbing to her precious doglet. Can smell she’s been to visit Uncle Pete and has been fraternizing with that Benji.
We don’t just sniff a single smell either – we get the whole story. We can tell whether another dog (or human) is male or female, what they ate, where they’ve been and what they touched.
Hmm… I smell meatballs for dinner.
* As told Ginny Stone
