The current issue of New Scientist has a package of several articles on how animals "see" the world around them, and one of the articles is on a dog's sense of smell — not only how acute the sense is, but on how they smell things. And it's different than the way we humans do. The photo above is from the New Scientist website version of the fascinating article, which you can read here.
One of the many reasons we don't consider our disabled dogs "handicapped" is because they do have this incredible sense of smell that tells them so much about their world — way more than we could possibly know. As the article points out, dogs have about 300 million olafactory receptors, while humans have only 6 million. Their olafactory cortex, the part of the brain that processes scent information, takes up 12.5% of their brains, but less than 1% in human brains. So when a dog loses his or her vision, or hearing, or both, they still have access to vast amounts of "data."
Watching one of our blind and deaf dogs, like Spinner or Katie or Spencer, walk around the dog yards sniffing away makes us realize just how engaged they still are with their world.
Anyway, I think you'll find the article well worth reading.
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Hurricane Irene: Yes, New Hampshire is right smack in the middle of the "cone of uncertainty" for the projected path of this hurricane. It should "only" be a tropical storm by the time it gets here on Sunday (let's hope!), but that could still mean flooding and damaging winds. We've been preparing for the past couple of days, and have plenty more to do over the next two days to get ready. So if we're offline and not responding to emails, don't worry — that's because we'll be spending most of our time until Sunday getting prepared, and we may well lose Internet access in the aftermath of the storm.
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