smell the barn

A reference to a livestock animal returning to its barn at the end of the day, especially a horse drawing a carriage which is on the way back home.

• "We’ll get home right quick—old Dobbin knows the way better than you and I do, and he can smell the barn besides."
• "Anyhow, Congress, like the old horse that starts into a long deferred trot when she "smells the barn," began to show action and as hearts on Capitol Hill leaned homeward, thoughts in the White House turned to the open road—or at least the railroad."
• "[…] Charlie Company could leave as early as mid-October—which is soon but not quite soon enough for them. "The horses smell the barn right now," said Capt. Clark D. Carr, the battalion's Protestant chaplain, who knows perhaps better than anyone how badly they want to leave."
• "Smelling the barn can result in driving too fast, not clearing weapons properly, and bypassing ammunition-recovery procedures."
• "Antyllus leaned his ear closer to the slave at his feet without taking his eyes off his over-eager team [of horses], which already smelt the barn ahead of them."
• "[H]e [Douglas MacArthur] had smelled the gunpowder again and in old age was once again the dashing young brigadier of World War I; […] This close, he simply couldn't abide sitting still. Like a horse, he smelled the barn and was determined to push ahead."

• home stretch