Readers are often left baffled by the bizarre retribution Marie de France’s werewolf protagonist inflicts upon his treacherous wife: why bite off her nose, specifically? Though critics have offered a range of interpretations for the wife’s punishment in Marie’s lai, approaching the significance of noselessness from a dog’s perspective may deepen our understanding of the poem’s central concerns. In “Bisclavret,” the wife’s noselessness is a marker of human failure of perception through her inability to recognize the truth of her husband’s character. It also signifies our overreliance on forms of communication that are much more susceptible to distortion and misrepresentation. Mouths can lie, ears and eyes can be deceived, but the nose cannot.