I smell worry.

I smell fear.

I smell hickory-smoked bacon, egg, and cheese.

My human isn’t here, though her smells linger in the air. There are other humans gathered around the television and I can see from my kennel that they’re watching something. My human got hurt the other day, and I haven’t been able to play with her. Someone else has been playing with me and training with me here at Virginia Task Force 1, Urban Search and Rescue. I like her, though she doesn’t have the same easy way with me as my own handler. I see her now with the members of the task force, all of them in their uniforms, and all of them sweating.

I hear the term “called up” a few times and “activated.” That means they think they’re about to go to work. That means there’s been a disaster. That’s what they do here, after all. They help when there’s been a disaster.

See? Dogs know more than they think we do. At least, I do. They call me Sage, which is a fine name and a delicious smell.

Humans love to talk about how smart their Search & Rescue K9s are, but they think we only know what we’re trained to know. We’re dogs and we’ve been training alongside humans for as long as humans have been walking upright. I’m a border collie. My ancestors were bred to herd sheep and assist humans in every aspect of tending their flocks. It’s not an exaggeration to say that humans would never have mastered livestock if it weren’t for dogs like me. And thanks to that lineage, I’m one of the great working-dog breeds in the world. If a person needs something amazing—almost impossible—done by a dog, chances are they’ll look to a dog like me.

But even the lowliest among us can see and hear and think and smell more than humans realize. Every one of us knows more about people than people can possibly imagine.

For example, I know when my usual handler has been riding her horse, just by the smell of it, and I know how long it’s been since she’s come to the kennel by the way her smell lingers in the air. Every day she isn’t here, her smell fades just a bit. We dogs can tell the passage of time with our noses.

I also know that these humans are on edge. We work for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, stationed in Fairfax, Virginia. When something bad happens and people need help, they turn to us, our teams of humans and dogs, to find people in need of rescuing.

It’s a super-important job, and the other dogs who’ve deployed on rescue missions always come back smelling of smoke and sweat and treats and triumph. They’re always a little puffed with pride afterward, like their tails have been dipped in peanut butter.

I haven’t had a chance to do anything like that yet. I’ve been training for it my whole life, or at least since I was a puppy. I’m two years old now though, not a puppy anymore. I’m ready for a real mission. I’ve learned how to search an area, following the cone of a scent to its source even when there are distractions and rubble and ruins in the way. I’ve learned how to separate thousands of human smells from each other, so that I can find a specific person even when there are dozens around me. I can find a person who isn’t even breathing anymore, and who needs help fast. I can find a person who is past helping, who hasn’t breathed for a long time, by the smell of the decay and the bacteria.

Yeah, dogs know about bacteria. Humans don’t think we do, but we can smell those invisible bits of life. We have to. That’s how we know when something’s food or not, alive or not, friend or foe or frightening. I mean, a person can carry around two pounds of bacteria in their body at any time. Some kind of sniffer I’d be if I couldn’t smell it, right? Leave two pounds of steak out and try to keep a dog from smelling it!

Anyway, I know that I finished something important the last time my handler was here, because I did a training in front of a lot of other people, and they all cheered when I finished with my last alert. I found the sock they’d buried in a box, telling them exactly where to find it by sitting and barking. That means I’m ready to deploy just like the other dogs when there’s a mission that needs me.

I can tell by the smells of sweat and adrenaline wafting in the air that the day might be today. I can’t see much, but from the humans around the television set I hear the words “fire” and “skyscraper” and “rescue operation.” And even more ominously, “cadaver,” which is a word humans use to describe a dead body when they’re trying not to get too upset about it.

The thing is, they’re always upset about that word. I can smell their upset-ness. It smells like salt and moldy onions and metal. It has a tang and it makes me want to sit down next to them and rest my head on their lap and let them scratch behind my ears. Humans love scratching behind a dog’s ears when they’re sad. It’s how we’ve trained them to manage their feelings. Dogs are good at managing humans’ feelings for them. Dogs are good at just about everything, in my opinion. I lack thumbs, but I don’t lack confidence.

Suddenly, the worry smell intensifies across the room, like someone just tore open a bag full of raw fear and sadness and excitement, and I know something big is happening. Really big.

“Oh my God,” says one of the humans at the TV.

“A second plane?” gasps another.

“This isn’t an accident,” says my substitute handler. “Those planes were crashed on purpose.”

I can smell sleep on her too. She was woken up suddenly to come in to work today. It’s early in the morning; there’s a morning crispness in the air and I’ve only just been fed. The humans are looking at their clocks and figuring out how long it will take to get to whatever place this airplane accident or attack or whatever they’re calling it happened.

“People would’ve been at work already,” someone says.

“Those poor people could be trapped,” says someone else.

“I think we better get ready,” says a third person, who always smells a little like cinnamon, which is not my favorite smell. It’s really strong and it makes me sneeze.

“To New York?” my temporary handler asks.

I don’t know where New York is, and a whine escapes me. I can’t help it. I blame the cinnamon. My eyes dart around the kennel and my nose works the air. My usual handler isn’t here and the thought of going on my first mission to some unfamiliar place without her makes me nervous. I can tell the other K9s in their crates are sniffing in my direction, smelling my fear. I pant, which calms me down a bit, and wait. There’s nothing to do but wait, really. I’m a well-trained, newly certified, two-year-old search and rescue professional. Even if I’m afraid, I will not let my fear stop me from doing my job, wherever it takes me and whatever we find.

“If this is an attack,” says the man who all the other humans usually take instructions from—I guess he’s their handler—“then we don’t know where we’ll be needed. There could be other targets. This could be nationwide.”

“Turning airplanes into bombs …” my handler sighs. “Dreadful.”

I know what a bomb is, because I’ve been trained to know what some of them smell like, but I’ve never been sure what they’re for. They seem to cause only death and destruction. Dogs like me are only called in after a bomb goes off. There are other dogs trained to find bombs before they go off. Still, I don’t think airplanes are supposed to be bombs.

A smell tangy as steel and sharp as lemons fills my nose. It’s the smell of resolve. The humans are preparing themselves mentally and physically for whatever is about to happen. Some of them leave the television and begin to pack equipment into bags, preparing for a deployment. I see breathing masks and special suits going into duffel bags, all kinds of detectors and baggies and even the dreaded heavy bags they use for cadavers.

I also see leashes and leads, and goggles and booties designed just for us dogs. None of us like that stuff very much, but the humans always try to put it on, telling us it’s for our safety. I wish they trusted us to decide what was safe for ourselves. We’re professionals too, after all.

Still, it’s nice they try to protect our paws. They mean well, these humans. Most humans I’ve met, in fact, mean well.

It’s a shame they can be so cruel to each other sometimes.

That’s one thing we dogs can never understand.