Olfaction

With 220 million olfactory receptors, our border collie Flash suffers badly at this time of year. We live alone, nearly 1km outside the village (about 700 inhabitants), so that he rarely gets to see members of his own species especially those of the opposite sex. This 1km is far too little for his olfaction and thus each & every dog in heat when the wind comes from the north, becomes a challenge to his conscience - stay at home & do his job as: house, yard, horses, chickens, cats and human being protector OR .... anyone looking? No? Then wooopeee and through the back gate and forest, down the tracks, across the fields and to the big city. It's party time ;-).

Doesn't bother anyone, he isn't aggressive and for us, we save an hour going for a walk later BUT he generally has to cross 1 relatively busy road in the village and due to our location, he doesn't get too much experience of the dangers of traffic. Naturally we go searching for him as soon as we realise he's gone which is usually relatively soon - one of the borders characteristics is that they tend to always get in the way as they want to protect their "family"; can be a real pain when you are trying to cook and he lies under your feet.

Luckily there are 2 main areas where he has particularly interesting young ladies so that the search is usually no more than 5 minutes with the car but it is 5 minutes of anxiety. This morning was such a day - I was mucking out horses, it was a particularly good morning, relatively warm & lots of sun so that my thoughts were with planning the work in the garden & I forgot to keep an eye on him. All went well and I gained an hour in the garden rather than on the morning walk.

No, I didn't know what olfraction was either - I had just googled to find out the comparison of the sense of smell between dogs & humans. And NO, I don't think my 5 million olfactory receptors are enough to drag me out of bed & search for the local village maidens at a particular time of the month. Anyway, the prevailing wind is from the West & in that direction, it's about 7km to the next village separated by pasture land constantly being soaked with slurry!