Monday, November 13, 2023

A dog's nose blocks the sunset

Scanning her neighourhood
London, ON
September 2023
This photo originally shared on Instagram


This late-afternoon almost-sunset roadside photobomb is brought to us by Calli the Wonderschnauzer.

She doesn’t mean to get in the way, but that’s part of the charm of welcoming a dog like her into our family: she just does her thing, typically led by her nose, and we simply follow along.

Sure, we have to watch closely lest she try to scarf down a wayward mouse or someone’s leftover Swiss Chalet holiday chicken dinner. But those moments are thankfully far more rare than the fairly typical sniff-fest that she’s demonstrating here.

I like to pause whenever she gets this way, because there’s something weirdly cathartic about watching a dog in her element. Nothing else matters to her in this moment. She’s perfectly content to run her insanely sensitive schnoz over every square centimetre of the neighbourhood, to map out which dogs have been where, and to ensure the bunnies and birds and squirrels aren’t getting in her way.

She’s undisturbed by the broader worries that fill our heads - a blessing, really, as she focuses only on the things that she can see and hear and smell. Yet at the same time she somehow carries all of us on her sturdy shoulders, never leaving our side as we work through the challenges of our decidedly more complex lives.

Which explains why I take pictures like this. Because some dogs seem to roam that interface point between the animal and human worlds with a particular kind of grace. They speak volumes without speaking a word, connect to our souls just by looking into our eyes or nudging us with their noses.

So I try to capture the occasional photographic reminder, as she’s earned the right to photobomb me whenever she wishes.

At the same time, I’ve learned to be grateful that this weirdly unpredictable little being chose us in the first place.

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Related:
The family grows by one, again, June 2017

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