How to smell like a dog.

The following essay is from my new book, Make It Anyway. If you enjoy this sample, I invite you to buy a copy or four.

Every morning, I wake up with a butt near my face. It’s Twiggy reminding me it’s time to go for our walk.

We stretch, we guzzle some water, we attach ourselves to either end of a leash, and we hit the road. Most days, we follow a similar route, from here to 40th Street and back. It takes 45 minutes and covers just under two miles of Phoenix.

Same route, two very different experiences.

Warning: Shameless exploitation of cute animal.

While we walk, I daydream or listen to music or a podcast.

Twiglet scours every inch of the sidewalk, the road, the gardens we pass.

She is transfixed by the buffet of smells, snacks, and turds that dot the street. Despite her squashed-in pug snout, she can smell a chicken bone from a block away. She homes in on cats, raccoon spoors, magnolia blossoms, burrito wrappings from construction workers.

She never fails to revisit one specific square yard of lawn, on the corner of East Highland, where every other dog who‘s ever passed stopped to leave her urgent peemail.

Twiggy is never bored or distracted on our walks. She is 100% present and engaged, always discovering something new on the miles that I float through, oblivious.

But while I watch Netflix, she naps.

How deeply can you look? How much can you see? What are your senses telling you that you miss or ignore?

Take an object in your kitchen and stare at one section of it for five minutes. Look at the bowl of a spoon. What does it reflect? What is it made of? What is its surface like? What color is it, and what else is that color?

Ride your eyes around its circumference a hundred times. Look deeper. See more.

Next, set out a second identical spoon next to the first. Spend five minutes noting the differences between them. The nicks, the wear, the reflections, the smell.

Art helps us see and show others what we discover, stuff they might have overlooked. Beauty, ideas, humanity, connections. Artists can see so much more than a camera does.

Almost as much as a pug.

Your pal,

Danny

My new book is out just in time for Hanukkah. Priced as low as Amazon will let me, so feel free to buy one for everyone on your list!