Variations On An Odor Theme

My family and I hurry through the doors of the Wayzata Central Middle School, helped along by an icy late November breeze. It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and we’re not there for a sporting event or a play, we’re there to see the Wayzata Symphony Orchestra. When we lived in Los Angeles, I would regularly take my then 1 year old son to the Hollywood Bowl on a weekday afternoon to watch the LA Philharmonic rehearse, but, that was almost 12 years ago. We haven’t been to the symphony since. It’s not that we don’t love the music, we just aren’t connected to that world – or so I thought. We found our way to the symphony through scent work.

Scent And The Symphony

It’s the Tuesday before the symphony performance and True the Border Collie is curled up in his crate, peering out at me from behind the wildly coiffed frizz of his tail; he bites at it, styling it like a barber from the Edward Scissorhands school. I’ve just arrived to meet True and Michael, his scent work partner, near the top of a metro transit garage for a coaching session.

Michael and I talk briefly about an ongoing struggle between he and True that goes something like this: True will ignore toys and other distractions when searching at home, or in practice sessions, but when he goes to a trial, all bets are off; he will often target a toy and harpoon it like Captain Ahab striking at Moby Dick. Michael sees a sandwich on the ground a few parking spaces away and wonders if that is the type of distraction that will lure True away from the hunt for target odor. You can’t know unless you try! We set a hide and make a vow that no sandwiches will be harmed during the search.

Michael cues True to search, and the sandwich appears to be off the menu as True works his way along the fringe of odor and turns towards the source. As he closes in on source, True pauses, at a mental crossroads, then turns away from odor and prowls across the parking garage on a not-so-secret sandwich mission. Before he can get close enough to make a meal of someone’s discarded meal, we stop the search and take a break at the car. I decide to take the leash for round two. True takes off from the car, pauses with a glance in the direction of the sandwich, then carries on in pursuit of the hide, making routine work of the odor puzzle, right down to his confident and sticky sourcing and indicating. Later in the session, we explore what it’s like for True to have Michael pose as a distraction when I handle, and vice versa. What we observe is that True has a very rich and complex relationship with Michael. There are so many possible outcomes to any interaction with him, as opposed to the very limited relationship True shares with me: it’s all odor, all of the time.

Michael and True are musicians. True plays the notes of a search, his body like a bowstring, the air like his cello. In the presence of odor True plays major key music, soaring along an edge, dashing back and forth as he follows a tendril of molecules, crescendoing into source with staccato breaths and a darting head. Michael plays the upright base in the Wayzata orchestra, his hands like two separate beings working in concord, one moving the bowstring like waves rolling onto the beach, one pressing and plucking the strings along the fingerboard like a five-legged spider dancing up and down his web.

Both dog and handler are also instruments, producing a sound reflective of the condition they are in, the tuning of their strings, and the skill and intentions of whoever is playing them. When True plays both odor and Michael, the performance is captivating. When True plays odor and Michael plays True, it can sound like Beethoven’s 9th symphony, or Beethoven’s 9th sandwich. To handle True is to step onto a moving roller coaster. To ride the crest of a crashing wave. He is graceful and powerful. He is just as ready to be Yo Yo Ma’s cello as he is to be a toddler’s toy guitar.

Sense And The Symphony

We take our seats for the symphony several rows from the stage with a great view of the rhythm section where Michael rests with his upright bass and music stand. For two hours, we are captivated by the individual and collective efforts of the orchestra. Each musician on stage generously shares their connection to the music. Sometimes a face is strained, a hand fumbles, a note falters. Other times, musician and instrument meld and speak to each other in mystical ways, the audience bearing witness to a sacred act.

A young woman leads a performance of the Rococo Variations from atop a small raised platform at the edge of the stage. Her cello faces out to the audience, her hand flitting up and down the neck of the instrument like a hummingbird. Her solo performance pushes the limits of her focus and endurance, yet her cello never breaks a sweat. At moments, she looks away from her cello and smiles softly at the conductor, cueing the orchestra to play their parts. At the conclusion of the symphony, we will learn that she has never led an orchestra in a live performance. As my senses shine a spotlight on each musician, I wonder what it is like for them to be the instrument of the soloist, the composer, or the instrument of the conductor.

Signal And The Symphony

At the end of our coaching session, Michael and I remark on how wonderful True is and how wonderfully he and True searched together. The conversation shifts to Michael’s upcoming musical performance. He speaks highly of the orchestra’s new conductor. He promises a lively performance with several firsts for the Wayzata Orchestra. I think about the mutual respect Michael and True have for one another, and the lively performances they routinely deliver. Do they have a conductor of their searches? As a coach, I often verbalize the dog’s behaviors in real time, much like a conductor’s hand movements that signal the occurrence of a beat – I love to do this double blind, where the hide location is also unknown to me. It allows me the chance to signal all of the beats of odor without judgement. When I do “conduct” known hides, I try to help the handler identify distinct patterns of behavior the dog expresses in response to the “composition” of the search. Much like an orchestra can play adagio or scherzo, a dog can search en rondeau, or in sonata form. On these cold late December days in Minnesota, it’s not unusual for a dog to express the presence of a “symphony No. 2”, in which case, you’d want to grab a poo bag and take him out outside!

The Energy Of The Symphony And The Search

The symphony concludes with an electric rendition of “In The Heights”. Michael and the rest of the rhythm section are suddenly in a bar in Havana, the classical sounds of Rococo giving way to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s muy rico broadway rhythms. As the audience gives a standing ovation with whistles and whoops, the musicians uncouple from their instruments and from the group. For the entirety of a 2 hour performance, Michael, his bass, the orchestra, and the conductor share a common purpose: to be transformed by the music, to transform their instruments, to transform from many into one, and to send the energy of transformation out to the audience.

Leaving the school, I think about Michael and True, and their transformative searches. I am grateful to be an audience to their performances, to sometimes be their conductor signaling the beats of a complex search. While Michael may not always play True The Instrument the way he plays the upright bass, he is a virtuoso at being the instrument for True The Musician. As the conductor of many of Michael and True’s searches, I sometimes place before them the daunting task of a Tchaikovsky piece or the lively flow of Lin-Manuel’s modern movements. The most challenging searches require dog and handler to trust each other and to recognize the particular piece of scent music they are playing.

The word symphony can be traced to the greek syn-phone, which literally means “together sound”. A quick check of etymonline offers a broader definition of “syn”, including “jointly, alike, at the same time, along with, in the company of”. It’s quite convenient when the word perfectly describes the act. For Michael and his fellow musicians, their primary goal is “together sound”. For Michael and True, their primary goal is “together search”. The energy of togetherness is the same wether you’re one of four upright bass players or one-half of a scent work team.

On The Outline of The Mountains of Brazil

When you engage in the practice of scent work, make it a scent symphony. Find ways to be with your dog that preserve the energy of togetherness. Give attention to the various roles each of you might fill in the orchestra of odor. Appreciate that your dog, inspired by his inspirations, is an Amadeus of anise, a Bach of birch. Your dog is the Heitor Villa-Lobos of scent work. Villa-Lobos’ Symphony No. 6 is a melody transcribed from the composer’s sketch of a mountain range outside the city of Belo Horizonte in Brazil. Your dog’s searches are behavior melodies transcribed from scent-sketches of odor molecules (or absence of odor). That’s worthy of a standing ovation (aka amazing treats or toys).

Happy Sniffing!