Can dogs smell time? Just ask Donut the dog

The mystery dogged our family for decades. How could Donut tell time? And not just the approximate time, but the exact moment before the school bus would arrive. Every. Single. Day.

You see, Donut was my husband’s dog growing up, from elementary school through high school.

“She was a stray that came to our house when I was about four,” my husband, Matt, says. She had big, brown floppy ears and giant white and black spots on her flanks. “She was a hound mix,” Matt says. “We knew she was a hound because she liked to roam,” he adds. “We had to be careful not to let her get out because she would roam the neighborhood.”