Dogs come in a variety of sizes and types. The types include at least two ways of interacting with the world. Some dogs, usually referred to as sight hounds, tend to be visually oriented. They identify and chase their prey using their eyes. Greyhounds are a good example of sight hounds. The other major type is a dog that depends mainly on scent. A bloodhound is probably the most well-known example of this type of dog.

I think Jesse, who I mentioned in an earlier post, was mainly sight oriented, but she still had an acute sense of smell. Once when I was in graduate school, I tried to go for a run at my parents’ house without taking Jesse with me. When I got to the back of their yard, Jesse came trotting across the yard. When she crossed the path I had taken, her head jerked towards me like it was tied to me by a rope. My scent path must have been obvious to her. She could tell not only that I had been that way, but which direction I had been going.

Zeke definitely falls into the scent-oriented family. When I take him for a walk, he spends most of the time with his nose a fraction of an inch off the ground. It can be annoying, especially for someone more used to sight-oriented dogs like Doberman pinschers, which is the type of dogs I had before Zeke.

A couple of weeks ago Zeke was lying on the deck, taking things in — mostly through his nose. It’s subtle, but his nose is working all the time.

Zeke lives in a different world from you and me. I can smell strong odors, like smoke or cookies baking, but I think that for dogs like Zeke, that’s like a black-and-white movie compared to a 3D color movie.