O/T Dog Question

T

toastythemosty

Cathlete
My little dog, Speck for some reason rubbed herself on this dead cat outside. I am leaving out a majority of the gory details. LOL! Well, I ran over part of this cat by mistake while on the tractor.....WHILE IT WAS DEAD...thank you! Part of it was on the tread of the tire and I had to get it off with a branch. Speck found it and...so you have it! I gave her two baths that day...OUTSIDE!!
So why do some dogs rub on dead animals. What is the point? First, some eat poop and now rubbing on dead animals??? YIKES! They are so cute and cuddly, but gross!!!!


Charlotte~~
 
LOL Charlotte. I can't answer your question but I can sympathize with you. I had a dog and a cat growing up and the dog used to go into the cat's litter box to eat his poop. YUCK! x( :eek:
 
It's an instinctive thing about scent.. both my dogs will throw themselves on the grass and rub their neck's etc. I know if I looked there would be a dead worm there! yuk! Once I gave my dog a piece of shrimp from shrimp cocktail and she dropped it on the floor and rubbed herself in it! I guess it was her way of saying what she thought of shrimp!
 
My little dogs rub their faces in yucky things also. Luckily, we haven't gotten close enough to a dead cat, but I am sure they would do it too! Any time there is something dead in the street (frog or worm), they try to roll in it.
 
As others said it has to do with smell, and also marking thier territory. The smell is stronger then *theirs* so they rub in it, to mark it. So if any other dog comes around and sniffs they know that dead thing is theirs. And they won't still the dead kitty, as it's meat.

Goes back to when they were actually hunting for food and had their own territories. Now it's just gross as the only hunting they do, is with the ball that got lost under the sofa.

Kit
 
>Goes back to when they were actually hunting for food and had
>their own territories. Now it's just gross as the only
>hunting they do, is with the ball that got lost under the
>sofa.


Ha ha! I loved this comment!

I never give my dogs "people food" but I did once give each of them a grape. Oh yuck, my female threw it on the floor and rubbed all over it. Nice...

Christine :)
 
I was wondering the same thing regarding the dog eating cat poop until about 3 years ago. I learned at that time that some animal poop has an enzyme/or some kind of protein in it that attracts animals to eat it. EWWWW! My dog used to eat stray cat poop which is just nasty. Now that our backyard is fenced in we don't have that problem often. However, I'm not sure about the rubbing on dead animals part.
 
I've always heard it's an instictive way of masking their scent so prey doesn't smell them as easily. Oh yeah, it's gross. I had a chow/retreiver mix who LOVED goose poop. When I lived in Maryland this was not fun as Fenton and I would go out for a romp, and Fenton who was normally a yellow dog would come back green.

Fortunately the geese don't visit California as much - I could not imagine trying to get goose poop out of my male Aussie's ruff. The dog has enough fur for 4 dogs.
 
I have to say that when my dogs do that its like they are all proud of themselves ,Its like dog purfume !! LOL Then they bum terribly when we tell them go away you stink LOLOh getting sprayed by a sunk is about the same LOL
 
A friend of mine lives in the country, and when her dogs find dead things (usually racoons), they LOVE to rub in them. The more putrid, the better, it seems. One of my cats likes to do the same thing on my dirty workout pants. Hmmmm.

I don't see the point of it, unless it's some instinctive thing to help hide their own odor? But how is it better to smell like a rotting corpse than to smell like a dog?

Poop actually may have some nutritive value to it. Not that I'd try it myself, even if starving to death (some people who are without water, like lost in the desert, have been known to drink their own uriine to survive. By the time I'd get to that point, I'd be so dehydrated that it would be really gross to do because it would be so concentrated). Now don't you love the direction I took your thread?
 
Kathryn,

Well now you got me thinking about my cat. She is a foot fetish feline. Everytime someone takes off their shoes she instinctively goes over to the shoe(s) and lays there on top of them sniffing away and purring like she is in heaven. I swear my pets are a trip!
Drinking urine? I would rather crawl somewhere and just die...never touch my lips. Same with #2. EW!

Charlotte~~
 
I have six dogs (that's a LONG story!) and I'm always how, immediately after a bath, they feel compelled to rub that nice, clean dog smell out w/ something nasty they come upon in the yard.
One yr., just as I was taking the Thanksgiving turkey out of the oven, our corgi decided it was a fine time to go for a roll in a dead something. Needless to say, dinner was delayed as she got a much needed bath. it's gotten to be something we talk about every Thanksgiving!
Valerie :)
 
See, that's the thing. We think the bath smell is nice, evidentely they like the stinky stuff!

My dogs do the same thing. DH asked me the other night why. I didn't know if they liked the scent on them or they were trying to cover the other scent with their scent.
 
I guess eating and carrying poop around is a regular dog thing cuz mine used to do it too. My cat likes to lay on my dirty clothes pile but yet he spends all day cleaning himself - go figure
 
With the dog I think it is scent masking.

Many of us that hunt either eliminate scent or mask it. Skunk works real well.

Why doesn't anyone want to share my tree stand?
Dave
 
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