The Nose Knows (4 page)

Back in Mom’s bedroom, I jumped against the door and closed it. One of us had to remember to shut the door. Fearless may have finally learned the importance of sleep, but Bobby still gets up too early for my liking.

As I climbed up my doggie stairs and headed to the other side of the bed, Fearless opened his eyes to say goodnight.

“Nice work today, Fearless. Mrs. Bittner always got on my nerves, but you understood where she was coming from. Maybe that’s because you’ve had to deal with all that scary stuff in your life.”

“You mean men in boots and—
breath—
cats fighting?”

“Yeah. Hey, listen buddy, if a man had kicked me in the head when I was a baby I’d be terrified of heavy boots too. And don’t tell the others—but cats fighting—well, that always scares me! You did a great job today, Fearless.”

“Thanks, Spunk.—
breath—
Have a good sleep.”

After a good butt scratch, I sighed and lay down. I always have a good sleep.

I drifted into the zone. It’d been a good day.

T
here are miles and miles of cornfields near where we live, but right around our house it is hilly and heavily wooded, with hard clay soil and a ton of rocks. The farmers left this area alone. Later, the developers cleared tracts and built houses, leaving woods surrounding each one. Dad said they were trying to appeal to folks just like them who wanted a large, nice home with all the amenities in a rustic setting. Mom loves trees and privacy, so Dad bought all the wooded land surrounding our house. This gives us deep woods on all three sides. Mom has her solitude, with plenty of deer, but she isn’t completely isolated. There are neighbors on the other side of the woods. The other thing that attracted them to this area was the campus and the town. Dad loved to learn. He was always taking a class in something. The town was big enough for Mom to have a thriving practice, while affording Dad ample opportunities for his management consulting business, especially since we were within an hour’s drive of two major cities. Mom loves living here. Even after Dad died, she never talked about living anywhere else.

It was the beginning of April, when the days could still be cold and blustery. However, today was an exception. It was a glorious, sunny day. The warmth of the ground felt good on my paws. All the fresh scent tracks told me the ground squirrels and woodchucks were now out of their burrows. The tiny green blades of fresh grass were very tasty. A human would say spring was in the air.

That must have been what gave Mom the spring cleaning bug.

In our house, spring cleaning is quite an event. I wouldn’t call Mom a clean freak. She’s more of an organizer than a cleaner. She feels comfortable if things just stay neat and don’t get too dusty or dirty. That’s a good thing. A clean freak would never tolerate all the fur bunnies under the beds around here. Most days Mom’s theory is so long as she doesn’t see them they don’t exist.

Then comes spring, and she really lets it rip. She moves everything. She cleans everything. I’ve learned not to roll in anything stinky for the entire month of April or I too might end up with a good scrubbing. Once May arrives, it is a whole lot easier. Mom gets too tired working in her garden to care if I’m squeaky clean.

Boy, do I hate baths! I’ve spent years perfecting the art of avoiding the bathtub. Unlike other females I know, I don’t care about looking pretty. I was born scruffy and I like it just fine. Terriers are a tough bunch. In my family, perfume or bows could cause serious identity issues. I guess it is fair to say I’m the canine equivalent of a human tomboy. I’m a big believer that there’s more to a gal than her looks. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t object to a handsome stud dog flirting with me. However, finding a stud muffin that’s worth taking a bath for is a whole other issue.

It’ll suffice to say that when Mom starts her spring cleaning, I avoid mud and skunks. While I don’t mind the sound of the vacuum, Fearless and Fancy-Pants hate it with a passion. Those boys simply refuse to believe me that it’s perfectly safe. Maybe it’s because they’ve seen how fast it sucks up those fur balls. All I know is that as soon as Mom opens that closet door, those two cats are gone.

Bobby and Sweetie, on the other hand, are like me. They never had a reason to panic at household noises. Bobby uses those powerful legs of his to leap to the top of the bookcase, while Sweetie settles into the basket on top of the table. Bobby knows Mom rarely has enough energy to bother with the very top of the bookcase so he settles in for a nice long nap. If necessary, Sweetie will just get up and move out of Mom’s way. He’s very accommodating.

I too find a comfortable spot. However, I must keep an ear open in case Mom needs me. See, one problem with spring-cleaning is that when Mom starts to sort through stuff, she inevitably comes across something tucked away that reminds her of Dad.

Wow, it’s been almost five years! Hard to believe that much time has passed. But yeah, now that I think about it, June it will be five years since Moxie went over the Rainbow Bridge. She left us right before Dad did. She had cancer. She was grateful the treatments had given her a whole extra year, but when it was her time to go, she was okay with it. She had a mission. She said she needed to be in place before Dad crossed over.

Dogs are not psychic. They cannot predict the future, but we all knew Dad’s body was changing. Every human has his own scent and if there are medical changes in that body, well, we smell it.

Dad’s death was a horrible shock to Mom. She didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. We critters did. We knew when he’d begun to leave his body. How did we know? We don’t have an extraordinary ability. We’re simply more tuned into life’s energy than humans are. When Dad’s energy began to diminish, we knew it.

Mom did not. She was unprepared and devastated. She didn’t see it coming. She knew Dad had some health issues but saw nothing imminently life threatening. Since she didn’t have our sense of smell, she couldn’t detect the changes in his body’s chemistry. To her, without warning, he died.

She had a great deal of difficulty learning how to live without the love of her life. I knew she’d never abandon me so I knew she’d survive. However, we weren’t so sure how she would flourish. We had to help her do that.

I doubt most humans have enough patience to listen to all the details of how we accomplished that, so I’ll just tell you the first days were spent focused on helping her get to the next day. Molly and I took turns being close enough to love on her, yet giving her the time and space to be alone with her grief.

Having to take care of us helped her from drifting too far. For example, having to feed us forced her into the kitchen, and that in turn stimulated her memories of food and she would take a bite of something. In addition, several times a day I’d sit by the door and give her my soft bark. I acted as if the doggie door didn’t exist. Mom would come and open the door. I’d just stand there and not move. I’d cock my head, look at her, and then look outside. Usually after one or two repetitions of this, Mom would say, “What’s the matter, baby girl, are you all confused too? Okay, I’ll go out with you.”

Bingo, Mom got her daily doses of fresh air.

It was a good thing that Mom had us. Dad had many business contacts in the community; Mom and Dad were both well liked. Many humans came to comfort her. But from what we saw they were so uncomfortable they weren’t very effective.

Some used the never-ending hugging technique. They would grab hold of her and just hug away. Maybe they thought they could smother her grief. Others stood there hugging themselves as if they were afraid to touch her. Maybe they thought her grief was contagious. Then there were the folks who never took their eyes off her. They watched her every move, and the moment a tear formed or her lip quivered they were right there asking if they was something they could do for her. Maybe they thought they could prevent her from falling apart by distracting her. The majority of people hugged her quickly and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss,” then retreated to the farthest corner of the house and tried to look busy doing something.

To us critters, death is simply the end of a body’s life here on earth. You leave your earth suit and cross over the Bridge. When we smell a friend that’s dead, we know life has left his body and he’s gone. Therefore, we no longer look for him to show up at dinnertime.

However, it doesn’t seem to matter what humans see or smell. It took Mom a long time to change her behavior patterns. For months and months, she’d head to the recliner to ask Dad a question, only to find he was not there.

Mom told us she’d learned no matter how much people love you, they grow tired of your grief and move on to the next life event. She didn’t blame them. She said it just made her feel alone with her grief. We critters know it takes a lot of patience, love, and understanding to allow humans the time they need to grieve. There is no formula for how long that will be.

It took Mom a whole year before she even began moving forward from surviving to thriving. Then it took several more years before she returned to living a life. Even now, there arise heart-wrenching moments. Spring cleaning is one of the times that I must stay alert. Mom can be cleaning vigorously and then she’ll open a drawer or a shoebox. Wham! She sees a certain picture or special trinket. The suddenness of seeing it opens a floodgate of memories and all the emotions rush to the surface. When that happens, she stops in her tracks, clutches the item that has unlocked her heart, and begins sobbing.

I’ve learned not to panic. I wait quietly nearby. In time, the sobbing changes to gasps and then finally subsides into little whimpers. If I time it correctly when I gently nudge her with my nose, she then swoops me up into her arms, buries her face in my fur, and shares her sorrow with me. I have learned to stay very still, provide occasional tender licks to her hand, and wait until she finally sighs and says, “Okay, Spunk, enough of feeling sorry for myself. Time to get back to work!”

Then I’m free to seal the deal by covering her face with a whole lot of kisses. This always makes her laugh, and up she gets. That’s how I know it’s safe for me to begin a serious nap.

A
fter her first encounter with Fearless and the zone, Mom became increasingly proficient at entering it. When humans are distracted their eyes shift, a part of their body fidgets, and their breathing changes. As I observed Mom, she was spending less time distracted and more time focused. Now when she got upset or needed to figure out a problem, instead of pacing, she’d reach for one of us and start stroking.

I don’t want to give the impression that when Mom enters the zone she spaces out in a trance or is on the verge of falling asleep. She doesn’t sit cross-legged on the floor and hum deeply from her diaphragm. She just becomes tranquil. The more tranquil she becomes, the more clearly she can hear her inner voice. Some humans say they can hear their spirit speak. Others say they are listening to their heart.

I’ve observed that when people become tranquil, they become more sensitive to a critter’s response. They then are able to experience us critters in a unique way. Unfortunately, this is rare. I’m much more likely to hear a human say—“Hey, she’s just a dog.”

Mom never thought of us as “just” anything. In fact, last night, she kissed me and said, “Spunky, I feel so sorry for people who think a dog is just a dog. They don’t know what they’re missing.”

Mom is quick to tell people that I’m not “just a dog.” Folks will smile politely but they look at her as if she’s crazy. As far as they are concerned, they are looking right at me and there I am—obviously a dog. However, over time, they get to know me and can see for themselves how smart and delightful I am. Then inevitably I’ll hear them say, “You know Spunky is not just a dog. She is a big personality in a fur coat.”

How true, how true. Sometimes a dog is not just a dog.

Yes, our Mom is special. We knew this, but she still didn’t know she had the gift.

The second time Mom stumbled upon her gift was with me.

We were out walking in the park. There are several parks adjoining the campus. One of those is where Puppy Park is located. It’s a big field where a dog can take their human and also have a good romp. With the arrival of all the cats, Mom said I was entitled to my own special time to be with her and other dogs. So now, every day we head off to Puppy Park.