Orly is always (at least) a step ahead of me.

We’re constantly innovating on our Explorer Walks, and we try out new routes and variations of routes constantly.

Let me amend that: Orly is constantly innovating, and I am always a bit behind in figuring out the real motivation. Let’s be honest here: The One True motivation is food. But it’s a little more challenging (to me, anyhow) to tease out just how Orly thinks a new route or new behavior will increase her treat intake.

I know that she intentionally guides me past yards where a barky dog is likely to be outside. And that she requests a treat whenever we pass yards that might have had a barking dog, even if the resident dog is nowhere to be seen. She recently led me past Milo’s yard twice on the same walk (Milo’s brother is a reliable barker, and their mom keeps a jar of treats hidden in a planter).

I eventually caught on to at least some of the ways that she, um, encourages other dogs in yards to bark as we walk by, such as sticking her nose under the fence or muttering something rude under her breath.

But it wasn’t until I read a recent review of an old favorite book (How Dogs Love Us by Gregory Berns) that I started thinking about all of the cognitive skill behind her masterminding our walks.

The author of the review, Daniel Antolec, describes putting together his dog’s excited expectation on days that a doggy friend was visiting with his dog’s ability to identify a pattern. Daniel’s morning routine varied in specific ways only on the days the dog friends were coming over. Daniel describes the book’s discussion of dogs’ ability to anticipate and dogs’ skill at learning from, communicating with, and forming bonds with other species.

Looking at Orly’s navigation of our walks with a bigger-picture view, I finally understand that she plans the route and engineers encounters with other dogs based on much more than a passing scent. She sets out with her goal firmly in mind (maximum number of treats) and is able to shift gears and redirect us by a block or a half mile if she picks up a promising cue.

I have accepted the truth that she will consistently outfox me. Lead on, Orly!

“I met a dog I could trust with my life,” author Deni Elliott says about her motivation to write Catching Sight: How a Guide Dog Helped Me See Myself. “Once I got past how amazing that was, I wanted to know how a dog gets to be that way.”

Catching Sight presents a three-pronged narrative that describes the extraordinary training and inter-species communication that goes into transforming a puppy into a competent, confident guide dog.

While researching Guiding Eyes Alberta’s early-puppyhood experience—and indeed, the pre-puppy experience at Guiding Eyes, which conducts deep research into genetics and past results—Deni explored every aspect of what makes it possible for a human with a disability to have a collaborative relationship with a dog who helps to mitigate that disability.

Anyone who wonders how guide dogs work, how they know what to do, and what makes them extraordinary will get answers in Catching Sight. They’ll also learn about how and why a person might hide their disability and Deni’s struggle come to terms with being publicly, obviously identifiable as a blind person.

But Catching Sight is about more than the guide dog-human partnership. It is relevant to anyone who wants to raise their puppy to become what Deni describes as “a true collaborative companion.”

Combining serious, fascinating information about Guiding Eyes Alberta’s education with humorous stories, it’s also a great read. I should know; I have read it at least a dozen times in various drafts over the past couple of years—and I will happily read it again, once I have the ‘real’ book in my hands.

Pre-order your copy at Bookshop.org, where you can support your local independent bookstore from the comfort of your living room—and get the book delivered still hot off the digital press. It will be in bookstores on June 16.

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…

I recently joined the volunteer team for the Missoula chapter of the Street Dog Coalition. This Colorado-based organization provides “pop-up” vet clinics for people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. Its 60+ chapters served more than 9,000 pets and their humans in 2025.

In Missoula, the vet clinics occur once a month and are advertised at shelters, food pantries, and other places people who might need them might be. The vets and vet techs, along with a dozen or so pet-loving volunteers, serve a seemingly unending stream of people of all ages with dogs and cats of all sizes over a few very busy hours.

The vets provide vaccines, check-ups, advice, and vouchers for to get the pets spayed or neutered. The vet techs clean ears, trim nails, and more. The volunteers weigh the pets, dispense food, donated leashes, collars, and toys, fill in paperwork, hold squirming pets for nail trims, clean messes, and hand out treats. Lots of treats.

Assigned to assist one of the vets, I got to hold dogs ranging from a 9-week-old puppy to an older dog who had been through a lot before finding her current human, a warm and loving woman who was working every angle to try to get the dog some care she urgently needed.

The chaos of vets, techs, and volunteers, along with a crowd of waiting patients, didn’t help reassure the already nervous dogs. (The cats were in a separate, quieter space.) Many of the dogs were too stressed to even take treats. Those dogs generally skipped the nail trim.

It’s still pretty chilly in Missoula, and many of the pets come in wearing sweaters, jackets, and onesies of all types and colors. Donated dog- and cat-clothing is popular and disappears quickly from the giveaway table.

Next to the giveaway table is a second table, piled high with bags of dog and cat food, separated into adult and puppy or kitten foods, most of it donated by area pet stores. At this clinic, the vets were also giving out flea & tick preventive and heartworm preventive, also donated by clinics that were clearing out stock that is close to expiring.

Chatting with one of the vets, I heard about a continuing ed seminar she’d been to recently about mosquito-borne illnesses, including heartworm. Since we barely  had winter this year, she said that we should be giving the preventive tablets year-round, since we can’t count on having enough days of weather cold enough to kill the mosquitos. That’s probably as surprising to most Montanans as it was to me!

An Austrian cow (a pampered pet named Veronika) has become world famous for her ability to use tools.

A New York Times discussion of Veronika and the study comments that “perhaps one reason cows have been underestimated is because very few of them get the opportunity to develop or demonstrate their cognitive abilities…” Longtime readers will recognize that I have made this argument regarding dogs.

Thinking dogs across the years have demonstrated their tool-using abilities, notably Koala using a toy to hold still another toy, Cali simply employing the backyard, and Orly (briefly!) summoning her doorperson with a bell.

As the accompanying photos show, Orly continues the tradition; she recently used a door frame to hold her Kong still. That a dog like Orly would apply her intelligence and any handy object (a tool) to help her obtain food seems obvious; she is a golden retriever, after all.

And none of this is surprising when you consider that dogs’ ancestors, wolves, use tools. Why wouldn’t that intelligence and ability be found in wolves clever descendants?

But back to Veronika: I am happy to add her — and and cows — to the long list of non-humans that use tools, which ranges from primates to elephants, parrots to crows, even octopuses and fish!

One of the highlights of winter in Missoula for me, and for many other families that include dogs, is running free on the golf course. This is a tradition that starts as soon as the golf course closes for the season, usually by Thanksgiving.

The golf course is part of the University of Montana campus. When there is enough snow, a local organization grooms Nordic Skiing trails, but even then, there’s room for dogs. On half the area, dog-hating skiers get a dog-free zone. On the other, people ski with their dogs or walk with their dogs.

On an early season visit (not much snow yet), we were wandering around, when suddenly, Orly spotted something very strange. She started chasing it and barking.

Only problem was, it was in the sky: Two para-gliders, coming in for a landing. Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that the athletic practice fields next to the golf course are a popular landing spot for people who para-glide from the top of Mt. Sentinel in Missoula.

Orly had never seen humans falling from the sky before!

To be honest, I’d never been that close to anyone landing, either.

I called her, but in the excitement, and with another — equally excited — dog chasing her, Orly was unable to understand what I meant by “Come HERE. NOW!”

So she didn’t.

The first glider landed and Orly ran over to greet her. Fortunately, she was a  normal Missoulian and loved dogs.

I managed to corral Orly about the time the second glider landed. Orly wanted to go say hi, but I dragged my wagging, barking, pulling, very excited girl off the field. Unfortunately, I had my hands full and did not manage to snap a photo of the gliders, so the image above is not from our adventure.