Report to The Agency: M3 and a Sense of Smell

While keyboarding my report to The Agency, which I have to do while my humans are asleep, I discovered that their Internet access is secured. This meant that I had to spend all of three minutes – 21 minutes in dog minutes – to guess their password.
Humans, I have learned, are odd and inconsistent creatures. For one thing they take great pride in their ability to walk on two legs. As you can see from the attached picture, there really is nothing very special bout that – I do it all the time when I need to look over snow banks or bridge railings – I am rather short for a secret agent. Not only that, but they have an expression they use all the time: “Just follow your nose,” but they hardly ever do!

Humans have a very poor sense of smell. When I take them for a walk through the neighbourhood and down to the village, they will carry on about how fresh the air smells, or how wonderful the smells are coming from the coffee shop or the bakery. But all that time they have been missing the thousands of smells I have been keeping track of! Squirrels, cats, other dogs, the woman who just went by and who was visiting her horse in those boots a few days ago, the kid who is carrying an egg salad sandwich in his backpack and the couple who are having coffee at the cafe while leaving their German shepherd home alone. All those and a thousand others smells and traces tell me everything I need to know about what’s going on in the neighbourhood. I know, for instance, that Mrs. Franklin’s son Peter is home sick from school, and that his cat Paws has worms.

It’s exhausting being an agent, having to keep track of all the coming and goings in the village, and what everybody is up to – and I do keep very careful track, I assure you. So is it any surprise that I sometimes have a little nap around two or three in the afternoon?

What really gets to me, though, is when my humans come and look at me and comment on how cute I look, and how nice it must be to have nothing to do but just lie around all day. “It’s a dog’s life,” they chuckle. Or “Poor Millie – dog tired again.”

Sometimes I think they have no idea at all about what it’s like being a Beagle Agent.

Yours,
Having filed another 200 new smells today
M3