Horace, like all dogs, heard dead-voices quite often, and sometimes saw their owners. The dead were all around, but living people saw them no more than they could smell most of the ten thousand aromas that surrounded them every minute of every day.

He was a Saint Bernard in his prime, five years old, nearly two hundred pounds in weight, and now, on the morning of June 16, 1980, he was pre-rabid.

Although most humans don’t know it, scents are like colors to dogs. Faint scents have faint colors, like pastels washed out by time. Clear scents have clear colors. Some dogs have weak noses, and they read scents the way humans with poor eyes see colors, believing this delicate blue may actually be a gray, or that dark brown may actually be a black.

Horace, like all dogs, heard dead-voices quite often, and sometimes saw their owners.