Sniff Walks

Recently, a friend told me about sniff walks.

So that night I took Oliver and Quincy out to test it. I just slowed down. Let them go. Let them stop. Let them read the ground.

Oliver and Quincy moved like they were finally allowed to be dogs. Noses down. Pulling toward fence posts like they held stories. Stopping mid-stride because something in the grass needed all of them.

Pussy willows. New leaves opening on the trees. Every invisible thing under the ground I would have walked right past, never knowing it was there.

And that amazed me — how much they could sense that wasn’t available to me.

I used to walk straight through most of it.

The only time we really slowed was when one of them signaled they had to go. Because that was the frame. Take the dogs out, let them do their business, maybe get a little exercise while I’m at it.

The walk had a job, and the job got done.

I thought I was walking them.

I was walking me.

It sounds like a paradox, doesn’t it. I love taking them out. They’re the whole reason I go. But once I was out the door, I unknowingly made the walk mine, and they just came along.

I’m the one with the leash, after all.

That night I watched them do their thing. A good sniff isn’t loitering — it’s their whole mind switched on. One block of it tires them out more than a brisk loop ever did.

And I didn’t know that. I was unknowingly depriving them of the thing they actually need, and calling it a walk.

It’s like trying to tell a fish about water. They won’t have a clue what you mean. They’re swimming in it.

They still love to run and play. They do. But this was something else.

The slower they moved, the lighter they got. More alive. More themselves.

Somewhere in it, holy shit. Something’s different here.

I didn’t have words for it.

Then the next night, another friend mentioned the same thing.

“Oh yeah, we love to do that.”

And then she said it.

“It’s their walk, not yours.”

And there it was.

Because I’d already felt it the night before. I just hadn’t named it.

The walk was right there the whole time. Oliver and Quincy were right there. And I was hurrying us past it to get it done.

Maybe you do that somewhere too. Maybe you don’t.

But once you see a thing like this, you can’t unsee it. And honestly, that’s what makes it fun. Not how did I miss that. More like: oh. Cool. What else am I not seeing?

Will I choose the sniff walk every time? Maybe, maybe not. Some nights it’ll be twenty minutes and a job to finish.

But I’ll never not know this now.

That night my dogs came home tired in a different way. Worn out from being met. From getting to be themselves, on their own walk.

And that, it turns out, is the walk.

🐾
— B