The dog's paw is a wonder...

One of my favourite quotes is from The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.

?Her father had taught her about hands. About a dog?s paws. Whenever her father was alone with a dog in the house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world! A bouquet! Great rumours of travel! She would pretend disgust, but the dog?s paw was a wonder: the smell of it never suggested dirt. It?s a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so?s garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen?a concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.?