There is a reason why dog owners have coined the term "poopsicle."

February 14, 2019 7:24 PM

The weird things dogs do when they poop serve a purpose. Afterwards, be sure to monitor the color of their poop to keep abreast of their health. And don't be too upset when they eat poop. It's probably an ancient pack-survival behavior. They'll even venture outside the species and eat cat poop—it smells like cat food to them.
posted by Johnny Wallflower (37 comments total)

Damn it, Johnny
posted by Hermione Granger at 7:25 PM on February 14, 2019 [14 favorites]

*slowly sharpens a knife while making eye contact with Johnny Poopflower*

Nice post you have here...
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 7:27 PM on February 14, 2019 [13 favorites]

Metafilter's poop streak continues.
posted by Catblack at 7:27 PM on February 14, 2019 [9 favorites]

What? It's dogs.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:30 PM on February 14, 2019 [14 favorites]

there was this one time, on this one website, where I just got overwhelmed by certain topics, you know? relaxed. evacuated. It left me in a brown funk.
posted by mwhybark at 7:35 PM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'm tempted to inform you that you're really pushing the envelope with these posts...but who wants a poop-filled envelope?
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:36 PM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

I mean seriously? Poop on Saint Valentines day ... rofl
posted by andrewmc at 7:54 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

My sister's dog used to take a frozen horse turd and carry it around in her mouth like a toy. When it started thawing she would drop it and pick up another one. I never saw her eat the poop of any other animal.
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:00 PM on February 14, 2019 [9 favorites]

Oh my god this is terrifyingly relevant to my interests. I just learned a lot! My heart was warmed at learning my dog looking at me while pooping is a sign of trust because he knows I will protect him. Awww.

I walk dogs at my local humane society and I realized one day that my feeling of happiness while I’m there is directly related to whether the dogs I’m walking have pooped, because I figure that makes them so much happier than going in their kennels and I feel content that I’ve done a good job if they do their big business out on the walking path with me. And for the dogs who do go in their kennels, it makes me so happy to clean and mop so they can relax again in a new clean spot.

Also, I learned way too much about dogs eating poop in the last few months with my Great Dane before she died. She had spinal disease and it caused fecal incontinence, but it took awhile to figure it out that was happening because she would eat the evidence. :( She was the ever helpful sort of pup.

Can you do one about cat puke next? My cat just bolted off my lap while I wrote this comment to throw up my Valentine’s Day gift to him of his favorite freeze-dried chicken. He can’t handle his poultry very well.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 8:04 PM on February 14, 2019 [16 favorites]

My dog would be mad I don’t give him the recognition he deserves as the official cat puke cleaner of the house (ugh). In return, I protect him while he’s pooping. Yay?
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 8:06 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

And don't be too upset when they eat poop.

This is terrible advice. Be upset. Discourage and try to train your dog not to do this. They can get parasites from eating poop.
posted by dobbs at 8:15 PM on February 14, 2019 [8 favorites]

And, here's one for ya... "Dogs use the Earth’s magnetic field when they’re relieving themselves. Not only that, but canines choose to do so in a north-south axis, a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology says."

I am an expert on dog poo/poop/crap/shit (can I say that?)/excrement/bowel movements and, pee. Ironically I had just come in from taking the Huskies out when I found this post.. (yes, there was a surprise late evening poop I didn't expect from one of them).

My dogs clock like poopwork, I can time my life around the elimination of Husky 1, and Husky 2. I can tell a poop sniff from a rabbit sniff, I can tell when a Husky REALLY needs to go out as opposed to, "let's pretend I need to go out because, snow/wind/squirrel/cat outside/good smells/etc. I usually know when they need to go out before they do... I can tell by the color when to stand upwind after they drop off a log or two.

Now, go to bed, Johnny
posted by HuronBob at 8:17 PM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

That first link was surprisingly insightful, that’s why the puppy must maintain eye contact while doing her business! Another mystery solved by a combination dog and poop post!
posted by lepus at 8:19 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

A few years ago when I lived out in the countryside, whenever I took the dog for a walk he would go seek out what I had to assume was the freshest horse poop he could find and enthusiastically scarf it down, then come bounding back ready to lick my face to thank me for the bountiful manna I as his Human had so wonderfully and magically provided. Clearly we did not understand each other well.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:20 PM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

My brother-in-law's dog is a cat poop connoisseur. Like, will ignore the easily accessible cat food and go muzzle-first into the litter. Yet this dog will not eat salad.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:26 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Around here, with four cats and two dogs, cat poop is referred to as "dog crack". Litter boxes are gated with retinal imaging technology for entry.
posted by HuronBob at 8:30 PM on February 14, 2019 [6 favorites]

Coincidentally, I'm watching Netflix's Russian Doll right now, and visiting Metafilter after finishing an episode and seeing another poop post really works nicely alongside the premise of the show.

(ok, that's just gotta be super misleading for all of you who don't know anything about said show.)
posted by bigendian at 8:42 PM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

One time me and my friends took their dogs for a walk along the water in Whistler in late November. The lab, of course, immediately bounded into the icy water. The chi-terrier decided to scavenge for goose poopsicles. We stood around and felt unusually good about the general competence of humans as a species.
posted by praemunire at 9:11 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I walk dogs at my local humane society and I realized one day that my feeling of happiness while I’m there is directly related to whether the dogs I’m walking have pooped, because I figure that makes them so much happier than going in their kennels and I feel content that I’ve done a good job if they do their big business out on the walking path with me. And for the dogs who do go in their kennels, it makes me so happy to clean and mop so they can relax again in a new clean spot.

There's a gentle sort of joy to this comment, the thorn bushes have roses. If this is what the shit streak has brought us to so be it.
posted by Jilder at 10:15 PM on February 14, 2019 [17 favorites]

I don't trust anything that eats shit and does not die.
posted by zaixfeep at 10:42 PM on February 14, 2019

Some of the most common human diseases are transmitted via the “fecal-oral” route so...
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 10:50 PM on February 14, 2019

Eh, zaixfeep, that kind of comment smacks of “I don’t trust anything that bleeds for a week straight and doesn’t die.”

Aren’t we all eating poop all the time from rodents and bugs in our food supply? Brushing our teeth with toothbrushes that our toilets spray with a misting of fecal matter when we flush? We all die eventually but I don’t feel too stressed about how microdosing poop might speed up the process.

The other awesome thing about dogs and eating poop: mama dogs eat their puppy’s waste for the first few weeks! (I think mama cats do this with their kittens too?) I had the privilege of fostering puppies at the tail end (heh) of mama dog doing this. It grossed me out but then I thought it was pretty damn neat. It certainly seemed awesome a week later when the puppies were weaned and I was going through mind-blowing numbers of puppy pads (7 puppies’ worth)!
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 11:08 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

They'll even venture outside the species and eat cat poop—it smells like cat food to them.

This reminds me of my favorite one of David Sedaris's Poems about Dogs.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 11:17 PM on February 14, 2019

Thorn Bushes, I was aiming more for the 'eat...and die' epithet than the one you mentioned. So I guess my comment was 'a swing and a miss' so to speak.
posted by zaixfeep at 11:17 PM on February 14, 2019

To be fair, zaixfeep, if you’d have asked me earlier today where I’d come down on the side of eating poop vs not eating poop, I wouldn’t have counted myself as so squarely in the “pro eat poop” group, much less predicated that I would leave a Metafilter comment talking about how awesome I find it. Life comes at you fast.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 11:44 PM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

It's day 14. deep breath, no i mistyped, shallow is better
posted by mwhybark at 12:41 AM on February 15, 2019

My sister's dog used to take a frozen horse turd and carry it around in her mouth like a toy. When it started thawing she would drop it and pick up another one. I never saw her eat the poop of any other animal.
posted by Emmy Rae

*sigh* I wish. Around here we call those "horse d'oeuvres."
posted by workerant at 5:31 AM on February 15, 2019 [7 favorites]

My parents had a big ol' black lab who would eat almost anything -- pantyhose, plastic razors -- but his most favorite thing was cat poop. They also had a little black cat who had been hit by a car when she was a kitten and whose rear end didn't work quite right as a result and she did not keep it clean the way most cats do. So Max and Mindy had sort of a symbiotic relationship where Max would gladly, gleefully even, lick all the poop off of Mindy's butt, keeping her "clean and fresh" (for assorted definitions of same). The dog outlived the cat by several years, and he was never quite the same after she was gone.
posted by briank at 5:50 AM on February 15, 2019 [3 favorites]

I had one dog that was an incorrigible poop-eater. He was an incorrigible anything-eater, actually. If it could possibly be scientifically classified as "edible" he would attempt to eat it. Poopsicles were his absolute favorite, though. He is the reason I own a steam cleaner. Because every now and then he'd eat so much poop in the yard (mainly a problem in winter when there was snow, nothing decomposes very fast, and I wasn't able to get out and clean up on a regular basis) that he'd then come right back inside and happily puke it all up again on the rug. *shudder*

In many ways I miss having dogs. But not that way.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:50 AM on February 15, 2019 [2 favorites]

Still among the greatest dog vids on Youtube.
posted by dobbs at 6:03 AM on February 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

My dogs definitely make eye contact while pooping and now I know why. Thankfully, neither of my dogs have found that they have a taste for other dog or cat poop. Unfortunately, they do enjoy chicken poop, which is massively unfortunate.
posted by Sophie1 at 6:04 AM on February 15, 2019

When dogs poop, the decreased pressure simply makes them feel like celebrating.

You and me both, pup
posted by Automocar at 6:58 AM on February 15, 2019 [3 favorites]

Re: autocoprophagia, the solution is canned pumpkin. Dogs LOVE it but it apparently makes their poop taste disgusting.

Before dogs, I never thought I would have to make poop taste disgusting, but, well, there you go.
posted by notsnot at 8:38 AM on February 15, 2019 [2 favorites]

Almond Roca, people. its called Almond Roca. dogs love it! (sorry!)
posted by supermedusa at 8:55 AM on February 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

And, here's one for ya... "Dogs use the Earth’s magnetic field when they’re relieving themselves. Not only that, but canines choose to do so in a north-south axis, a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology says."

This seems to warrant some skepticism. There are lots of geographic indicators in the average dog's life that have nothing to do with a magnetic field: shadows, the sun, streets, mountains, wind-direction. . . Rather than indicating blinding, I'd argue that the fact the researchers didn't know what they were testing originally is a sign of cherry-picking and questionable use of statistical tests. Physically, the magnitude of the variation in magnetic field between calm and not-calm periods make the whole thing really hard to take seriously. e.g., compasses work.

Once it's replicated in a double-blind, controlled study that described the test in detail before taking data, I'll believe it. (I'll volunteer to help with it. Installing a giant Helmoltz coil in a dog park sounds like a lot of fun.)
posted by eotvos at 9:09 AM on February 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

The spinning and rearranging before having a bowel movement may also have something to do with the earth’s magnetic poles. When dogs poop, they prefer to do so “with the body being aligned along the north-south axis under calm magnetic field conditions.”

i've heard this, too; i wonder why? and i wonder with the recent pole shift whether anyone is measuring if dogs' pooping axis has realigned accordingly.
posted by kliuless at 10:37 AM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

We spend a lot of time outside. This is, as far as I have been able to discern, my dog’s ultimate poop tastiness ranking scale, in ascending order of deliciousness:

5. Dog

Ugh, why. Grade: F-

4. Cat

Mostly not worth the trouble unless he gets a wild hair. Coated in too much sand, unpleasant texture, humans haven’t had to gate off the litter box for years. Grade: D-

3. Moose

Not the best, not the worst, not worth a “leave-it” stand-off and may be dropped to placate the humans. Dusty on the inside but good for a quick snack on the go, especially in winter- really, they’re nature’s own tiny bon-bon. Notable for its year-round availability. Grade: C+

2. Goose

When it’s in season, the game is ON. Bite-sized convenience, good color variegation, sumptuous texture. Imagine: a swampy field near your house filled suddenly overnight with a veritable bonanza of delight. We are not “leave it”ing this anytime soon, my friends. Grade: B+

1. Bear

Truly, a rainbow of possibility. Texture and color vary subtly throughout the season- each pile full of its own delicious surprises. Best are the weird liquid ones with a hard weatherized skin on top; it’s like pulling the ribbon off the most special of birthday presents. This most rare of seasonal treats can still be found at least weekly in regular summer haunts, and the satisfaction of finding and consuming a large pile before your humans can do much about it vaults this scat to the absolute peak of our ratings. Grade: A
posted by charmedimsure at 12:51 PM on February 16, 2019 [5 favorites]