PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

It will not be news to anyone who knows me to report that I am a dog lover.

My wife, Nancy, and I have had two – first Hogan, who is in heaven looking down on us, and now Callaway who provides us our every day with love and devotion.

And those to emotions go both ways.

So it was this week that I read a piece by the Associated Press under this headline:

Exhibit explores keen senses, abilities of man’s best friend

It was a story about a major dog-related exhibit that is starting in Los Angeles and moving to other cities.

The AP writer asks this question: Did people domesticate dogs or was it the other way around? And why do these two species seem to think so much alike, act so much alike and get along so well?

He reports that the California Science Center has spent the past five years sniffing out the answers to those and hundreds of other vexing canine questions. It will begin revealing the conclusions Saturday (last Saturday) with an ambitious, if somewhat lighthearted, new exhibition called “Dogs! A Science Tail.”

“It’s really not about just dogs and science,” the museum curator says. “It’s really about how dogs and humans are both social animals. About how dogs and humans have evolved together over thousands of years. And the fact that, because we are both social animals, we’ve learned to work together.”

Most of us have seen dogs around fire hydrants. They do what comes naturally to them. But the new exhibit on dogs reveals this:

“…we just smell pee. A dog can tell what other dog was there, what time they were there, and actually which direction they were going.”

Dogs have an amazing ability to learn information, in part because of the estimated 300 million sensory receptor sites they carry in their noses. That far outnumbers the six million receptors in humans.

These receptors led the exhibit curator to say that, “In a bedroom, dogs can hear a termite scratching on the wall.”

Such skills also provide more riveting benefits. An avalanche rescue dog is able to sniff out a person buried in snow in a minute’s time while its handlers stand there without a clue. Dogs are able to sniff out bombs people would never find until they exploded.

Those who see the L.A. dog exhibit watch canines from around the world help save people from drowning off the coast of Italy, rescue people trapped in collapsed buildings, even track down Kenyan poachers preying on endangered elephants and rhinos.

They also can watch Garmin, a two-year-old golden Labrador retriever who is about to graduate from guide-dog school. He takes blindfolded folks through a maze of obstacles, and when one person hesitated, Garmin pulled gently on his leash as if to say, “Come on, let’s go. I’ve got this.”

But do really love us?

Or, are they just trying to wheedle another treat when they open those big black eyes of theirs and give us that look?

“If you look a dog in the eye, a dog will look back at you and you will produce oxytocin,” says the exhibit official. It is the chemical known as the love hormone because of the feelings it evokes in people.

“And,” the official adds, “the dog will produce oxytocin in his own body from looking back at you. It’s a mutual affection.” A chimp, on the other hand, will just look away.

Back thousands of years, both wolves and people could see the other was pretty good at hunting for food. But did the wolves walk up and offer their help in that endeavor? Or, did people make the first move?

Whoever did, they created an enduring bond.

And, I have been lucky enough to experience that bond twice – first with my good old boy Hogan, and, second, with Callaway who is just getting out of puppy hood.

They both came from the same poodle breeder in Amity, Oregon, and she says that, if you trace the lineage, Hogan is Callaway’s uncle.

Both great dogs – and, more importantly, great friends.