Yet Another Dog Blog

June’s cousin Skippy is currently staying with my friends and the two of them really look and act quite similarly, particularly with their long narrow delicate sighthound snouts, but Skippy’s 22 lbs and Junie is 17 lbs. …It does seem we chose the lesser of two weevils.

heat seeking behavior

Attention seeking missile

The coolest thing about life with a dog is that if you watch them closely and pay attention, their sensory array gets grafted into yours. My little lurcher has lived with us for less than three weeks, but already I am noticing squirrels CONSTANTLY in anticipation of her chasing them, but even more than that, she hears faint sounds I can’t and she smells a whole world I have no access to, but by observing her I get little windows in…. Watching a dog follow a scent trail is incredible because you see their heads trace the path of an animal that was there minutes or hours ago that you as a human with your sight-dominant brain would have never even known had been there in the first place, and if you have tracking experience like me you can even make educated guesses based on the movement patterns of what species they just found — squirrel, groundhog, mole, you name it. It’s like seeing through time! The dog is learning the sound of our Toyota Corolla and starting to realize that when it comes back to the driveway, one of her dads is returning home so it is time to run to the door and throw a party, and she hears it long before the car even comes around the corner to pull into the driveway where I can see it with my human eyeballs. And maybe most wonderfully: living in an old wooden house that moved and breathes and goes bump in the night regularly when the household is hypervigilant can be a whole Experience, but if the dog isn’t worried we aren’t worried either! A dog is a marvelous piece of technology, truly, and one that loves you back to boot. What a wonder!