Every great explorer knows that you need a good navigator by your side when on an adventure. I often joke about putting Asa in charge of directions, and blame him when we inevitably get lost. However I never actually thought Asa took me serious when I said he was in charge of navigation on our adventures. Apparently he did though and has been doing this draining job on all of our hikes!

For you see, Asa scent marks on our hikes…a lot! Don’t get me wrong, I leave my mark occasionally too, but it is nothing compared to what Asa does. He stops to relieve himself way more on hikes than on our regular neighborhood patrol. I always interpreted this as his dog version of graffiti, to tell everyone who follows, “Asa was here!” I never imagined that in reality all those potty breaks was Asa methodically marking the trail so we could find our way home. However, recently we watched a documentary on wolves, a refresher course I apparently needed to see, because in it they explained that wolves use scent marking to help guide them on long journeys!

I decided to do further research to see if this was correct. According to Wolf Haven International, “scent marking is used to clearly mark the boundaries of territories, to claim and defend that territory from other packs, to mark food ownership and to act of a sort of roadmap for the pack itself.” Alright, so apparently scientists have known about this phenomenon for awhile, based on a study by Roger P. Peters and L. David Mech, “Scent-Marking in Wolves,” published in the American Scientist, (November-December 1975), and posted online in February 2019 in JSTOR. In my defense, I have enough work to do researching places to explore. How was I to find time to learn about the importance of marking the trail, especially at trail junctions where it is easy to go in the wrong direction? Regardless, Asa has been doing it all along.

I wasn’t the only one skeptical of Asa’s rationale for all the stops along the trail, Mom and Dad were too. So they decided to do their own experiment. On a recent hike they made mental notes on where Asa left his mark. They chose a trail we frequent regularly, so it was familiar to Asa. And despite it being a loop back to he car, after walking for awhile we turned back and retraced our steps. On the return trip we did notice Asa would pause in the general area of where they recalled him marking before, but was not leaving a new mark. Could it be he didn’t have a drop left in him? Nope, because when we got to the car he did one final pee before jumping in for the ride home. Was Asa stopping to admire his work? Maybe. So we can’t tell for certain if he is doing this for our safe return to the car, or if he wants to alert the ladies that he was there. After all, his nickname is cASAnova! Clearly Mom and Dad’s experiment was not perfect, and there is room for human error in it. More research needs to be done before we know Asa’s intentions for certain. Therefore, in the meantime I’m still going to assume we’ll be getting lost when he’s in charge of directions!