Tracks in the Snow.

"My dog has no nose." So starts a famous old joke. Merlin does have a nose but it has long since ceased to function; the problem is purely down to age. As I know to my cost, as we get older, various bits start metaphorically falling off, be we human or canine. Most of a dog’s navigational abilities are down to its sense of smell, the eyes play a minor part in the process; so it is that Merlin, first thing in the morning pretends to go out for a pee but, in reality, he’s going to find what food the birds left yesterday. What he doesn’t know, and is incapable of discovering, is that I put it in a different place yesterday to attract the birds to within camera range of the kitchen window. The tracks in the snow record his path to where he thinks the bread crumbs should be - and back again.
 
As an aside, every evening, Merlin gets a rich tea cookie biscuit thrown onto his bed. Because of his aforementioned lack of smell, and the canine lack of visual acuity, he takes several minutes to find it. He searches on the floor around his bed, and then underneath it; he eventually succeeds when he accidentally touches the biscuit and gobbles it up very quickly before it has a chance to disappear again.