My dog likes poop
He loves them so much he rolls around in them
It's a mishap that has necessarily happened at least once to all dog owners: you walk quietly with your dog until he comes across cow dung and cheerfully start rolling around in it. You don't have time to react when his entire coat is "perfumed" with a disgusting smell that will make you nauseous!
In fact, this type of misadventure can be declined just as well with excrement of all kinds as with the corpses of animals in the process of decomposition in a word: everything that smells extremely bad! But why the hell is your dog doing this?
Well simply because the perception of "what smells good" and "what smells bad" is first of all very subjective and is absolutely not the same between our canine friends and us other humans. Very often, dogs roll around to mask the smell of their last shampoo which is pleasant for us but foul for them!
Another explanation would be due to the predatory instincts of the dog, inherited from its ancestor and cousin the wolf. For a dog, rolling around in smelly materials would:
- either to mask your own smell and not be smelled and spotted by your potential prey,
- or to tell the other members of his pack that he found something worthy of interest there.
He loves them so much he eats them
Some dogs show a completely different behavior likely to upset us: coprophagy, this behavior which consists of eating excrement, its own or those of other animals.There are many explanations for the origin of this behavior. Depending on the case, it can result from a medical problem of the dog, a behavioral problem or prove to be completely normal!
Read also: The causes of coprophagia in dogsNormal or not, however, it is not necessarily good for your dog's he alth because coprophagia can lead to contamination of your dog by pathogenic germs or parasites. If your dog is accustomed to the fact, then consider consulting your veterinarian to check that he does not suffer from any he alth problem and to increase his frequency of deworming.
My dog drags his butt on the floor
Have you ever seen a dog moving forward dragging its hindquarters on the ground? This mode of movement is enough to make you laugh but, in reality, it reflects itching, discomfort or pain for the animal in its perianal region.
The presence of intestinal worms or a condition of the dog's anal glands are the most common causes of this behavior which has a name: the "sled" sign.
My dog is eating grass
Dogs, carnivores by nature, sometimes start "grazing" on grass like a ruminant. But why?
Here again, many hypotheses have been put forward to explain this behavior, but the enrichment of the dog's food ration with fiber or the induction of vomiting by ingesting grass are often hypotheses the most plausible.
Also Read: Why Is My Dog Eating Grass? All possible reasons.My dog is trying to grab his tail
Here again, when a dog turns around in an attempt to grab its tail is a behavior that may amuse us but which should rather concern us.
Unless the dog is still very young, tail chasing can be the result of localized pain or discomfort in the tail or be a way to get the owner's attention . It is also a behavior that can be related to an obsessive compulsive disorder in dogs or be the consequence of a neurological disorder.
Also read: My dog bites his tailMore generally, one should always ask oneself questions when the dog presents other types of stereotypies, that is to say when he repeats the same attitude or the same movement again and again, such as when, for example, he licks or bites his paws compulsively, starts licking in the air or swallowing imaginary flies. These behaviors are then likely to constitute the behavioral expression of a deep malaise in the dog or of a neurological disorder.
Also read: Why is my dog licking his paws?My dog sniffs everyone's private parts
Nothing abnormal about that even if it makes you feel uncomfortable. Dogs live in a world of smells. His sense of smell is 40 times more developed than that of a human being and helps him to understand what is going on all around him. It is also thanks to his flair, and not thanks to his eyesight, that he gets to know his congeners, always starting by sniffing their behinds! This is because there are pheromones there that the dog can pick up, thanks to its vomeronasal organ, in order to learn more about their owner. He can thus receive various information on the latter: his sex, his age, his state of he alth and his "state of mind" of the moment
What are pheromones?
Pheromones are chemical substances secreted outside the body and which participate in olfactory communication between individuals of the same species, and sometimes from one species to another.
When a dog sniffs your private parts, he is therefore only reproducing what he does with individuals of his species: he is simply trying to get to know each other by picking up odors, these "olfactory messengers" , to find out who he is dealing with.
My dog scratches the ground after his needs
While cats dig the ground before defecating, it is common to see the opposite phenomenon occur in dogs: many of them scratch the ground with their hind legs after defecating. But why?
In doing so, the dog underlines the fact that he is marking his passage thanks to his "olfactory signature" , that is to say by the pheromones secreted by his pads that he leaves at this place. He then associates his olfactory message with a visual signal understood by other dogs to tell them that there is something to sniff at this place.