I hadn’t stepped inside yet.
The car door shut, my keys still in hand, and through the front window, his head lifted. No bark. Just that stillness, the kind that means he knows. Somehow, he could smell the road on me, the coffee shop on my sleeves, and the faintest trace of the morning’s rain on my skin. It didn’t matter that I’d been gone for hours, to him, my scent had been waiting here the whole time, and so had he.
We set out for our walk, and where my eyes saw a park bench wood, paint, metal bolts, his nose told a different story. The morning jogger from two days ago. The sandwich crumbs a child dropped last summer. The ghost of a squirrel from last night. Scents layered like pages in a book, each one a chapter only he could read.
The grass was a jungle at his height. A butterfly wasn’t just a flicker in the air, it was a storm of color. Every shoe print in the dirt was a breadcrumb trail to a story. I thought I was leading him down the path. Truth was, he was leading me, into a world too small for my eyes, but endless to his.
Later that day, we visited her.
She sat in her recliner, smiling,
her voice warm, but something underneath trembled. I didn’t notice it. He did. Quinn walked to her knee, pressed his head into her hand, and stayed, still as prayer. Later, she told me about the news she’d received. Somehow, he already knew.
They say dogs are looking for a leader. He’s not. He’s looking for the chair where I read my books, the sound of the kettle before tea, the creak of the porch boards when I sit down at sunset. He doesn’t want to rule me. He just wants to belong to the rhythm of our days.
And walking beside him, I realize,
I see the world in moments, but he feels it in rivers: rivers of scent, currents of motion, eddies of emotion. And when I try to see through his eyes, to smell through his nose, the world is richer, older, and far more alive than I ever imagined.
Stories Past Present Future 