Even dogs do it! and other phenomena

Nutmeg is making her own transition to her new environment. She isn’t a homebody like she was in Maryland where, I’m embarrassed to say, she didn’t leave the yard unless she was going to the Vet. How sheltered was she? The first time I took her to the park – on the way home from the Vet’s, of course – she wouldn’t go on the grass. I don’t mean, she wouldn’t go to the bathroom on the grass, I mean she wouldn’t step onto the grass. She would only walk on the pavement. The first and only time I took her to the lake, she wouldn’t go into the water above the knees: her knees, not mine. And then only when I threw a most appealing stick into the water just beyond her reach. Remember, we’re talking about a Labrador Retriever here. Before you report us, also remember she had an acre to roam, race across and hang out on so she wasn’t exactly deprived.

So, ok, how do I know she’s making her own transition? Well, there’s this:

• We have to walk her now, as I’ve related in past stories. Not only is she following smells back and forth across streets and edges and ditches but she is marking those olfactory trails. That’s more than leaving a calling card – that is an act of establishing dominance. And it doubles our walk-time because she has to sniff until she finds just the right target; this happens 3 or 4 times per walk.
• We don’t take her to our friend’s house now because she has decided she needs to make her place in the pecking order that exists among our friend’s 3 dogs. And that ain’t at the bottom! She and Beau (the youngest, a male, and current holder of last-place) co-exist peacefully for minutes at a time, until one looks at the other askance, and they’re off – barking, snarling and standing stiff-legged. The real problem will present if Nutmeg challenges the ruler of that roost, a Doberman female about Nutmeg’s age, who’s used to obeisance. So no risks – Nutmeg doesn’t go visiting there now.
• She has discovered “going for a ride.” She’s a good traveler until a car pulls up next to us that she deems threatening. And what she deems threatening is: a loud radio; a loud muffler; a loud person on a cell phone; I’m beginning to think she finds a loud color worth a growl or two.
• Last, and don’t ask me what started this, she deems drive-up ATM machines as suspect. No sooner do I pull up to the Bank of America ATM, she starts to bark. And bark. Until I turn around and snap the equivalent of, “Don’t make me come back there!”
  

And speaking of olfactory stimulation, I have been so taken with the scents that tease; it’s almost like a cartoon where you would see the good smell wafting through the air in visible form, as though it was edible fog.

• I know I’ve described that, in the winter, when I stepped out before dawn in the cold weather, the juniper next to our deck gave off a piney-turpentine odor. Now, I find myself grabbing a branch as I walk by and bringing that odor to my face.
• Then Spring began to change the blend and I didn’t have a name for it, but was so aware of it. Rudolfo Anaya, a native New Mexican author, wrote the phrase, “…spermy and spongy with the smell of thawing earth…” and I knew that’s what I was smelling. Different than the scent-change of a Maryland spring.
• Getting off of the neighborhood’s human-disturbed ground and into the forest or onto the grasslands, there is the fragrance of sun-warmed earth mixed with natural herbs that wrap around me like a flannel sheet, making me want to burrow in.
• And I think that the earth has a genetic memory. If not, then odors travel a very long way. More than once this month, I’ve gone out, especially in the stillness at first light, and smelled a salt-laden ocean breeze. Genetic memory because the deserts in this region were once sea-beds and still carry the marks of the oceans that covered them. Or travel a distance, because the weather patterns often come from the south-west, in which direction lies the Gulf of California and what’s left of the Colorado River delta flowing into that gulf. But no mistaking the impression of soft, wet, salty smell of tidal flats.
• When the winds came up this last week, gone was the wet smell of the tides and back the hyper-clean air of the high desert and mountains, but tinged with smoke. And something else. Observing Nutmeg yesterday afternoon in winds about 40 mph, she had her nose stretched as far up as she could, standing almost on toe-nails to stretch just a little farther. I couldn’t get her to come with me, no matter how hard I yanked on the leash. She was facing into the wind, like a treed flock of birds, and studying its scent-freight with her fullest attention.
  
  Hope that gentle Spring breezes are warming the air for you…ss