Canine Stream of Consciousness

Driving
into the office this morning we saw an obviously ecstatic black lab with
its head way out the window of a late model BMW, with its right front
paw braced casually on the rear view mirror. What must be going through
its mind, we wondered.

Being notoriously poor-visioned four or five meters, we doubt they are
taking in the scenery.  On the other hand, we all know that dogs
have a highly developed and discriminating sense of smell, if one can
describe a love of sticking one’s nose in shit as discriminating.

Anyone who has ever taken a canine out on a walk knows that it is an
exercise in nasal examination of every bush, garbage can, animal trail,
discarded paper and anything else which smells different, interesting
or unusual.  Should a dog detect the odor of another animal, say,
a dog of the opposite sex, considerable tugging and cajoling may be
necessary to convince it to keep up the pace.

So we suspect the nasal soundtrack, so to speak, the flow of esters
and phonemes which capture a dogs attention, must make up a pretty
significant segment of the sensory smorgasbord which constitutes a dogs
experience of the world.

Probably, as he or she ambles along at a sedate pace, these odors replace
each other in a gradual, evolving scentscape, coming up faint at first,
growing in riche\ness and detail as the dog gets closer, dominating finally
the entire odiferous spectrum, then to be abandoned, left behind to be
replaced by new stimuli, smells and possible sport. All at a slow leisurely
pace.

Sticking its head out of the window of a moving car, on the other hand,
might be somewhat akin, for a dog, to watching the final 12 minutes of
2001 – A Space Odyssey while on acid and speed at the same time. Smells
coming and going at 60 miles an hour, faster than they can be processed
or reacted to. We can only suppose it is a pleasurable sensation, as
almost all dogs seem to love the sensation.  Their tongues hang
out and they get a goofy, glazed look in their eyes. Which, come to think
of it, was pretty much our reaction to 2001 – A Space Odyssey…