The Thinking Dog’s first iteration of Smell Walks (also called “Sniffaris”) was released in 2016, while I was reading Being a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz. When Koala, Cali, and I walked in my current neighborhood, the Walks got their first serious update.

Orly, who is very much her own dog, has spurred a third release with a new name: Explorer Walks. Huh, she sniffed virtually to Koala (who retired a couple of years ago). “I’ll take your sniff budget and raise it … exponentially.”

Orly enjoys deep, long sniffs of anything I will let her investigate. And she loves our usual morning walking route, which takes us through a couple of neighborhoods, past three schools, and through the alley behind a restaurant and a mini-market. That was Orly’s choice; she does not like going past those businesses on the front sidewalk.

This route connected her with Super Hedgie, whom she carried all the way home.

She definitely has her favorite stop-and-sniff spots, but she is more novelty-seeking than Cali or Koala.

At least once a week, she chooses a different route. We start off the same way, and at some point she turns left or right where we’d usually go straight, or continues down a street, breezing past our usual left turn.

We’ve explored the Rose Park, many side streets, and a significant chunk of the neighborhoods around the university and a high school. We’ve walked the wrong way on one-way streets, explored small parks, met new dogs and, presumably, different neighborhood deer. We pass a couple of friends’ houses, countless interesting gardens, and a couple of fences with windows at dog-height, but no dogs.

Orly’s other enhancement to the Smell Walks is the pursuit of yards with barky dogs.

Orly has expertly engineered our morning walks to maximize:

• New and interesting sniff spots
• Old, reliable news sites
• Treats extracted for provoking but not responding to barky dogs
• Number of times we pass by the Big Dipper each week, just in case it has decided to open before 8 am

All this, and we (almost) always get home in time for me make some coffee before I start work at 8:30. Not surprisingly, I nearly always need more coffee…