My mother was a West Highland white terrier and my father a white Sealyham terrier. I am a Nosey Parker.

This is what Oomna says. It must be true.

I find it very difficult to keep my nose out of other people’s business. My curiosity consumes me.

I have to breathe in their lives even if it throws me into a wheeze. Purpose and compulsion push me.

My sniffing comes I guess from a need to connect with people, to see my experiences reflected.

So in a day of 24 hours, I spend 44 percent of my time being on a deep scent-alert.

I rummage into everyone’s lives the Nosey Parker way, the only way I know.

This means following the Nosey Parker code. Be a regular snoop and smell deep to get to the truth.

The smells are bewildering at first, full of secrets and subtleties I don’t understand. 

The scents that are quick to evaporate I catch by their tail.

I then trail the depth and solidity of the more stubborn smells to their source.

I put together these fragments and draw up histories.

These smells tell me where everyone has been, what they have seen, who they have met, what they have eaten and how they are feeling. It comes blowing into my face.

I pull their stories in backward in one fluid movement, the last detail first. It then comes together perfect and intact.

I understand that a perfumer is lauded as the ‘Nose’ or ‘Le Nez’ in French. If a perfumer is an artist, I have a maestro’s edge in the art of sniffing.

Oomna scolds me for nosing around ‘inappropriately’ most times and crossing invisible lines.

I see people wince, hunch forward and turn their position. But I know no non-Nosey Parker way of sniffing.

A body part is a body part for me. Bum, hand, foot or ear.

Let me assure you I know my manners. I don’t spill the secrets I unearth. Nor do I snoop for scandal.

I spend the other 21 percent of my time in drowsiness, 12 percent in rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep and 23 percent time in the deepest stage of non-REM sleep. One that scientists call slow-wave sleep.

When I lie and my leg twitches in my sleep be sure I have given myself up to dreams.

Though I am a dog, cat naps are my thing.  

More than that I love my deep slumber. Because my REM and non-REM actions are logic and consequence-free.

I do what I damn will. I will have no 'down’, ‘still’, ‘beg’ or ‘obey’ moments. 

Today in my dream I go past my Nosey Parker identity and am a strong Puli, the dog with dreadlocks. You know the dog breed that resemble spin mops gone wild.

I energetically scuff my paws in the mime of a Puli fast run.  

I have a look on my face that humans have when they hide a secret they are not supposed to share.

This is because I know grooming a Puli does not include a brush and comb, instruments by which I am abased daily.

Oomna sometimes even foolishly plants a bow on my collar. To appeal to my vanity? Am I a female dog?

I won’t say the word for it as I overheard Oomna say to her friend that it was a swear word.

So female dogs are bad? They must be, if Oomna says so.

But my heart balloons with happiness when I chance upon the lovely girl dog Carma across the street.

I cannot stop my tail from wagging. Am I being disloyal? Or it is head’s up for tails?