Dog Noses, Smell & Memories
Contributed by Doug Ferguson
An article by Ned Rozell, a writer for the Geophysical Institute published at the beginning of October entitled “The World According to a Dog’s Nose” in both the Copper River Record and the Anchorage Daily News, got me thinking about both a current experience with a dog and some old “smelling” memories.
Rozell’s article describes the research showing that a dog’s sense of smell is somewhere around 1000 times more sensitive than ours, thus opening a world to our canine friends that we know nothing about.
This remarkable ability of canine smell that Rozell describes can be observed by anyone who has worked with dogs. Here in Alaska, we’ve been without a dog or a cat in our home for the first time. However, we have done extensive “dog sitting” for my wife’s daughter who has a little Russell Terrier “Vita” who is blind in both eyes!
When we first met Vita after moving up here to Alaska in 2017, she was just two years old and not yet blind. We did several “sitting” sessions with her where she stayed at our house. She fit in well and seemed to enjoy staying with us. She picked up the layout of our house and knew where everything was located, like her dishes, toys and sleeping arrangements.
Over the next few years, however, she developed canine glaucoma and eventually had to have both eyes surgically removed. We both wondered how this was going to affect her life and ability to survive both indoors and outdoors, especially at our house when we were “sitting” for her!
We needn’t have worried! Both her sense of smell and hearing kicked into overdrive, and she does just fine! She does bump into chairs (which do get moved) on occasion, but she knows where her “Frisby” toys are in a basket we keep in the corner and picks out her favorite (by smell, we presume), brings it to one of us to throw down the hall so she can “fetch” it!
She has even learned to enter and exit our deck both from the inside of the house and the outside to our yard. She knows the complete layout of the edge of the property at our woods, where the gate to the back yard is, and even where she smells a vole near or at the base of our house!
She also treats the family individually, again identifying each member by smell and their voice. When you call her name and talk to her, she faces you, cocks her head and for all the world you would swear that she is looking directly at you! A remarkable adaptation to losing one of your main senses and using those you have left!
Rozell’s article also explains how our nose is connected directly to memories in our brain, short circuiting the process that much of our other information does during memory processing, making these smell identifications immediate and involuntary.
Very personal memories come to mind. When I was of grade school age, living in Massachusetts and before we moved to Ohio during my high school and college years, each summer my mother and I would take the train to where she was raised. For a few weeks, we would visit my grandmother in Youngstown before my father would drive out on his vacation and pick us up to go home to Massachusetts.
All my mother’s family lived in the area. My “smell” memory at that age is based on visits to my very active and intense Aunt Bernice. Depending on the smell as you entered her house, you knew what day it was! This continued even after we moved to Ohio.
Monday, laundry day, the smell of bleach and strong soap filled the air! Tuesday the dominant odor was that of heated starch and linens given off as shirts and other items were ironed!
Back in those days after WWII, “Toni” home hair permanent kits got introduced and became the rage. Aunt Bernice became very proficient at giving these. Every Wednesday the terrible stink of the putrid chemicals involved filled the whole house as she gave permanents to family, friends, and neighbors!
But Thursday was my favorite day! That was “baking” day and the wonderful smell of fresh baked goods compensated for all the previous day’s odors! Also, fresh cookies just out of the oven were treats for us kids!
Finally, although my aunt was not especially religious, Friday was “fish for dinner” day, keeping with tradition for her daughter’s Catholic husband. The smell of fresh fish baking permeated the house and stimulated our appetites for that evening’s Friday feast!
Mmm! Even after almost 80 years, I can still smell those cookies and fish!