If there’s one thing that all dogs have, it’s a great sense of smell! We are like land sharks. We can smell anything from a long ways away, and we can even smell traces of people on things. We can even smell things that are inside suitcases or cars! Our noses are just that powerful.
Which is why you always see is sniffing everything! Our noses are basically our second eyes, so we use it a lot.
In my case, my nose is my only eye. You see, I can’t see anymore. I was born this way and had to learn to adapt to life without seeing. It was harder when I was younger, because I had to discover the world through sound and smell, but I’m basically a master at finding my way around without seeing!
Maybe It’s A Baby Chicken
So because I rely on my nose a lot, my humans will have me sniff something whenever they want to introduce something new to me. This can either be a guest, a new furry friend, or even my human getting a new perfume. It’s a great way to get me comfortable with the smell so that I’m not surprised when it smell it around the house!
My humans will also tell me what it is, and I get to feel it with my face and paws to try and guess what it looks like. Let me tell you, this is especially fun for me! I get to imagine all sorts of things in my head, until I can finally piece together a look.
I Use Sound Along with Smell to Figure Things Out
Like I said, sound helps too, a lot. I listen to a lot of TV, so I’m pretty good at identifying sounds and what animals they go to. This makes life a lot easier when my family brings in new friends to the house.
I always have to be extra careful, though. Because I can’t see them, I can’t tell how big or small they are. I never want to push anyone or step on anything, so I make sure to be very, very gentle when identifying new friends.
My humans are always there to keep an eye on things as well – no pun intended!
Visualizing Things Can Be Hard, But I Can Do It
Sometimes I’ll really sit back and think after getting a good sniff. It can be really hard to visualize things in your head when you’ve never, well, visualized anything! It’s helped, trust me. It’s hard to explain, but trust me when I say it works!
I Try To Apply Knowledge and Feelings to New Things
Once I have an idea of what I’m smelling and listening to, it’s nice to apply what I know to what the new thing is. Like, when a baby bird is put in front of me, I know that they’re usually “yellow”. I’m not sure what everyone else sees when they look at “yellow”, but I know that it makes me feel happy! To me, yellow means happy.
To me, “blue” is sad, “green” is energetic, “red” is anger and “white” is calm. It’s hard to explain, but that’s kind of how I “see” colors and things!
I can’t wait to discover new things and friends and see what colors they are!
