Amazing Wonders of Life On Display During A Dog Walk

The wonders of life are on display during any walk with my dogs. As I’ve written often, the wonder of it all is revealed to me every single time I leash Maggie and Toby up, and head out for our walks.

There are incredible things to be seen, and experienced, on the most ordinary of strolls around the neighborhood.  All one has to do is pay attention.  Truthfully, I am as guilty as anyone else for being preoccupied at times, and not noticing the wonders all around me, and the dogs have helped me immensely to slow down and concentrate on the beauty . . . and that is what this post is all about. The quality of life, for me, improves every single time I open my eyes and soak it all in.

Random fact #1

Did you know that, at any given moment, there is enough atmospheric pressure, weighing on our bodies, to crush us?

Truth!

The atmosphere above us, something like one-thousand kilometers of it, is made up of gasses, and gasses have mass.  As such, they have weight.  Every square inch of the surface of our bodies has about fifteen pounds pressing down on it.  All told, the average body has the weight of a school bus pressing down on it daily.

Why, then, are we not crushed under the weight?

It’s because air is fluid and, as such, the atmospheric pressure presses down from above, but also up from below.  In other words, holding your hand out, palm up, there are, maybe, about one-hundred pounds of atmospheric pressure pressing down on that palm, but there are also about one-hundred pounds of atmospheric pressure pressing up on the back of your hand at the same time.  It all balances out and allows us to walk around, unaware of this incredible battle going on, unaffected by it all.

The wonder of It all!

Random fact #2

There are days I lose patience with Maggie and Toby on these walks, and it is usually because they want to stop every five feet to smell something.  I want to walk and exercise; they want to sniff and categorize.

While a human being has about five-million scent receptors, the average dog has somewhere in the neighborhood of two-hundred-and-fifty million scent receptors.  To state the obvious, they are bombarded by fascinating smells on every single walk.

That abundance of receptors allows them to smell things we will never experience. They are capable of smelling fear in a human (adrenaline has a scent). They can smell drugs hidden in secret compartments in vehicles. They can be trained to find certain mushrooms in the forest, even if those mushrooms are several feet underground.  And, if downwind, they can smell a predator and will instantly go on alert, even though they have never met or experienced that predator before.

Their sniffing may annoy me at times, but I have learned to trust in it and pay attention to it.

The wonder of it all!

Random fact #3

I catch a glimpse of myself in a car’s side mirror.  I am reminded of something I read twenty years ago. Consider this: of the nearly seventy billion human beings who have walked this planet since the beginning of time, there has never been another person exactly like me and, of the billions who will follow after I have died, there will never be another person exactly like me.

I am unique. I am one of a kind.  I am the rarest of the rare, a priceless treasure unmatched throughout time . . . as are all of you reading this.  And yet I am guilty, at times, of taking this life for granted and, at times, treating my daily life like it is a grind, some burden to be hefted and endured.

Life is a gift.  I am capable to doing miraculous things with this body and mind.  I can give comfort to those who are suffering. I can give love to those who feel alone. I can give empathy and compassion. I can make people laugh, make people feel wanted, and make people feel important and appreciated.  I can create, I can problem-solve, and I can be a light in a sea of darkness for those lost.

Seventy billion before me and not one me . . . until now!

The wonder of it all!

No, there is nothing mundane, or ordinary, about my walk with the dogs.  Nothing mundane at all, my friends.  My retirement is a happy retirement, and it gets better every single day.