Celebrate The “Wild Music” Of Your Dog’s Search

When I think about why I give my time and energy to the practice of searching with dogs and humans, I know it is because I see a great opportunity for humans to be transformed by the experience. And, if humans can be transformed through a deep and mysterious connection with their dogs, maybe there is hope for more of us to tune in to the bids for connection that come from all around us – from other humans, from other animals, from the trees, the mountains, the rivers and lakes. From life itself.

In Kathleen Dean Moore’s beautifully written collection of essays, “Earth’s Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World”, the reader is invited to participate in the great choir of life. Birds awaken to the rising sun, and we awaken to their songs. The ocean hisses and roars, and we gather treasures offered from its depths and its shores. Lightning cracks the sky and sparks a fire on a mountain, we draw our breath in suddenly and quiver before the sky’s destructive force. Rain falls on the bows of a sitka spruce, pinging off the rocks, dripping from clumps of moss, we rejoice in the healing, creative force of the sky. Very little technology or industry is needed to commune with our earth. Just a willingness to become aware, to accept that everything is connected.

However, as Moore achingly documents, awareness and acceptance may soon be speakers through which no wild music plays. 200 years of technological and industrial progress fueled by rampant capitalism have dramatically altered the world. By all measures, we are heading towards a mass extinction of life on earth, and humans have been at the wheel with their foot on the gas pedal.

If some of the worst-case predictions for our global future are even half-realized, our course has been set, and drought, natural disaster, and decimation of plant and animal diversity will rapidly worsen. If there is any hope of saving the beauty and song that delights and nourishes our souls, it lies within each of us.

We are not simply the audience, we belong to the chorus of the natural world, along with all the birds, whales, wolves, butterflies, leaves, mycelium, glaciers, and fireflies. The song of existence was never meant to be sung by a single voice. Life is call and response. Not call into silence.

It is overwhelming to face the present situation on this planet. To think of the bees & butterflies, the frogs, the bats, the wild places. Everywhere we go, a fellow inhabitant of this planet is struggling to adapt to the rapid changes brought on by human activity. You don’t have to rush out and face the whole world and all its challenges, you can start by turning towards your dog, this animal that you protect, and let your dog connect you to your forgotten world.

Turn towards your dog and just study him. Notice the depth of his eyes, the lines of his legs, the wisps of hair midway down his back, the splay of his toes, the feel of the muscles of his jaw, the sound of his breathing, of his tail thwapping against the cabinet door. Now, wonder about what your dog knows. Don’t try to figure it out. Don’t come up with an answer. Just wonder.

Nose work is the only game I know of that your dog can choose to engage in at any time, with or without you, and, your dog can successfully go from searching to sourcing without your cues, without your guidance, without needing to be in a special setting with special equipment. Your dog does not rely on you to do nose work. Wonder about that. Now, wonder, why you would have the thought that your dog can’t find a hide, or doesn’t know where the search area is, or needs your help? Don’t come up with an answer. Just wonder.

Next time you do a nose work search, get into the wonder state and study your dog. Notice how your dog communicates. Not the way you want, always, but always communicating. This is your dog’s song.

Just as a birdsong can signal the arrival of morning, the arrival of a predator, the loss of a mate, the celebration of a meal, so your dog’s song of search changes to express what is happening from his perspective. It is perspective that will save the earth’s wild music. More than any creature on earth, we humans have the capacity for taking perspective. We can choose to take any perspective we can imagine. We can lose ourselves in a solipsistic house of mirrors, or we can step into the field, the meadow, the marsh, the valley – the search – and dream the perspective that the earth and all life need.

What if, the next time you search with your dog, you dream that he is playing the song of your heart? What would that really feel like? Will it include the concepts of confusion, distraction, frustration, disappointment? Will it include ideas of right and wrong, or disqualification? Only if you dream those notes into being. And, what if confusion, distraction, or frustration arise in your dog? Imagine if you just joined your dog in being with those experiences. What if those moments came and passed, and your dog moved freely from a state of focus to a state of frustration and back? What if you imagined that there were reasons for each and every moment of the dog’s way of being – reasons sometimes known and sometimes unknown by the dog, but almost always unknown by you? What if, the great success of time spent with your dog is your ability to receive his song and in return, play the song of his heart to him?

Kathleen Dean Moore does not write about “how to” be connected to the rest of life on earth. She writes about what it is like to be connected to the rest of life on earth. There is no “how to”. There is only the desire to connect. The courage to wake up and to trade “I am special” for “all is special”. The way to a deep peace and joy is through your dog’s song of the search, through your response to that song – not your correction or direction of that song, your response. There is no “how to”, but maybe there is guidance: stop thinking. If you are thinking, you are not playing your song. Thinking is not the instrument that creates the notes of your song, your contribution to the chorus of life. Unless, you think as Norman Maclean describes it in “A River Runs Through It”: “All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that isn’t even visible.” This thinking is really sensing and knowing. When I run my fingers through the ridges of an Elm tree’s bark, I trace a hundred tiny canyons. When I taste fresh snowfall on a cold, sunny morning, I change the state of water, and it changes me. When I smell the pads of my dog’s feet after a long hike in a new hollow, I wonder, could I find his smell out there on that trail? When I listen to my dog in the search, I move towards understanding. Dream. Sense. Know. Play your song. Join the chorus. Join your dog.

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Happy (singing) Sniffing!