Chapter three

It's hard to describe a dog's sense of smell.
Imagine the sharpest scent you have ever smelled. Or the strongest. Like when farmers spread liquefied manure on the fields and that first hot day heats everything up. Now, amplify that by about 25 times. Can you imagine? That is how strong our sense of smell is.
Not only can dogs smell odors, but we can smell emotions. People don't know this, but they give off different scents. Fear has a very distinct odor, very sharp. And sadness, sadness is a heavy scent. Happiness is lighter, almost citrusy.
Among dogs, certain breeds have better noses than others. I happen to be a mixed breed - German shepherd and border collie. Both of these breeds are known for their highly developed sense of smell. I have cousins who have served in the military, and in the police force as drug dogs.
Dogs can sense odors at concentrations 100 times less than people, too. A dog can smell one drop of blood in five quarts of water.
Those of us with longer noses generally are thought to be better scent dogs because there is more room for the smell to move around and be diagnosed, I guess. All of the dogs around here have long noses, but mine is the longest. I have the black and white coloring of a border collie, with speckled legs and a curled tailed, but I've got the long, pointed nose and ears of a shepherd. I think the best of both worlds, but I'm not bragging.
I even heard her talking one day about dogs that are thought to be able to detect disease. I can do that, you know. I knew when she had cancer a few years ago. That was an awful time for me, because I couldn't tell her. I tried. That's probably the worst thing about being a dog living with a human family. There's so much I could tell them. So much.
The scent I am catching this morning has the heaviness of sadness and maybe a hint of fear. Definitely a human, but not an adult.