They Have the Scent: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* [[Tintin]]'s dog Snowy regularly picks up trails. He's not usually successful, though; on at least one occasion he was actually going after a bone rather than the criminals Tintin was trying to catch. Tintin also scatters pepper in one story to put an enemy dog off the scent.

 

* In ''[[With Strings Attached]]'', George becomes a dog in order to track Ringo, who has run off into the forest to escape the craziness in Aurion's tent.

 

{{quote|'''Aragorn''': [about the orcs] ''Their pace has quickened. They must have caught our scent. Hurry!''}}

** Inverted in that it is the orcs that are being pursued, and they've caught the scent of their pursuers (Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli) and are speeding up so they won't be caught.

* Maximus tracks Flynn this way in ''[[Tangled]]''. (Maximus, by the way, is ''[[All Animals Are Dogs|a horse]]''.)

* In ''[[Lady and the Tramp]]'', Trusty is a retired tracking bloodhound who has lost his sense of smell. When the Tramp is taken to the pound, Trusty tries to pick up the scent. Joq at first feels sorry for his old friend and tries to make him admit he can no longer track, but Trusty scoffs it off and continues. Against all odds, he manages to pick up the scent and arrives just in the nick of time.

 

** In ''Blood Pact'', the Chaos forces transform one of their number to do this, and later, when Mkoll picks up Gaunt's trail, Kolea phrases, "He has the scent."

* In [[Discworld]], once criminals start hearing that a werewolf has joined the watch, they grow wise and carry 'scent bombs': a thin glass vial of peppermint oil or aniseed oil is shattered in a busy intersection, where hundreds or thousands of people will walk over it, obscuring the criminal's scent with theirs. Also, Moist Von Lipwig has an emergency escape plan (hatched after he heard the watch employs a werewolf) including detours through the butchering district and riding dung carts.

** Except that this won't work, since Angua ''can'' track a suspect through those. The one that does get her is the spice market.

* In ''N or M'', Agatha Christie's Tuppence Beresford has rubbed aniseed oil on her shoes so that she can be followed by the officials when she goes to meet a suspected spy. When the person escorting her to the meeting tells her to get into a car, {{spoiler|she expresses doubt about the quality of the tires, and kicks on several times, transferring the aniseed oil to the sidewall of the tire.}}

* In [[John C. Wright]]'s ''[[Chronicles of Chaos|The Orphans of Chaos]]'', when Grum sets Lelaps on Vanity and Amelia's trail, he finds them, turns away, and starts to bay, running off. Grum comments that he's found the scent.

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s "[[Red Nails]]", when [[Conan the Barbarian]] and Valeria are inching away from the dragon, the wind abruptly blows directly from them to it. Its reaction is instant, and they ''run''.

** That is, the tracking dogs had to be primed with a scent, and the scent they were given was of the girls. The police dogs caught the third scent mixed up with them, and knew from training that that was the real target {{spoiler|Wild Bill's}}, and tried to hunt that down. The others track what they were given to track. Where the two diverge, they disagree. When they find the scent of the girls minus the third scent, they all chase that down. The search party makes the obvious assumption when the dogs lead them to what is found- a blood-covered [[Scary Black Man]] with the mangled corpse of a white girl in each hand. [[Poor Communication Kills]].

* [[Matthew Hawkwood]] and Lassuer are hunted using dogs in ''Rapscallion''.

* In [[Gene Stratton Porter]]'s ''[[Freckles]]'', they try to use bloodhounds to find Black Jack. They follow his trail an amazing amount, but finally lose him in the depths of the swamp, which is attributed to snakes frightening the hounds.

 

* ''[[MythBusters]]'' busted pretty much all of the traditional methods of throwing a dog off the scent: just about the only place you might conceivably lose a scent dog is in an urban environment, where there are too many other scents for the dog to concentrate on yours. Unless they're using a dog that has been specially trained to ignore all other city scents, as they demonstrated. In which case you're screwed.

* ''[[The Tenth Kingdom]].'' Tony has asked Prince to sniff for clues. Prince instantly responds that (since they're in a farming village) it's mostly excrement at ground level, and there are hundreds of minor scents. Tony then flatters Prince by saying that a master hunter like himself should be able to find the scent they want instinctively. Prince says, "Correct," and off they go.

* ''[[Leverage]]'': A militia group uses hunting dogs to chase Eliot and Hardison in "The Gone-Fishin' Job".

 

* In Limp Bizkit's music video for "Eat You Alive", police dogs are shown sniffing out the scent of the woman the band has kidnapped, and they give chase.

 

* The titular hero in ''[[Batman: Arkham Asylum]]''. With his (bat?)scanner he can extract separate essenses (like tobacco stains or alcohol vapors) and then pinpoint them in the surroundings to track the smoker/drinker.

** To which [[Sergeant Rock|Seargeant Johnson]] replies: "Then they must love the smell of [[Badass]]."

 

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' makes use of the eponymous [[The Blob|amorph]] ability to track by scent. Of course, [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2009-08-05 this works only so far].

* In ''[[The Specialists]]'', [http://thespecialistscomic.com/page-13/ the dogs start to bay once on the trail.]

* ''[[Girl Genius]]'' has "wasp eaters" - many-legged weasel based constructs who start screeching when they smell a [[Puppeteer Parasite|Slaver Wasp]], Revenant (anyone into whom an enslaver has implanted) or Geisterdamen (probably because they work with hive engines). Being weasels, they also can attack on their own.

 

{{reflist}}