Why is dog poop sometimes white?

Since I was a kid this has appeared from time to time: where a dog has relieved itself on a sidewalk or yard I’ll see white feces. Is it just because they’ve been there a long time? Or is it specific to certain breeds?

More to the point, why do you never see a white dog log any more? Is it something that’s changed in their food?

Yep, it has a lot to do with diet. When my dogs are fed a mostly raw diet with a lot of bones, their faeces are small, compact, turn white very quickly and disintegrate rapidly.

Dogs fed tinned food, or poor quality (i.e. cheap, supermarket brands) dry dog food (kibble) will typically have much larger, damper, smellier faeces in greater quantities, which take a lot longer to dry out and go white.

The difference is most probably in the amount of fillers (grains such as corn, wheat, rice, etc) which dogs don’t digest very well, and which pick up a lot of water going through the digestive tract.

I think the new scientist covered this, probably in their last word column. I don’t have a subscription so I can’t search - has anybody else?

I recall their answer was that a component of the food had been removed, causing the change - either calcium or ash.

I suppose the calcium makes sense - if it was in a large proportion, once that moisture had evaporated you would get the chalky result. I remember from being an inquisitive child that if you poked a dry one with a stick, it pretty much turned to dust.

tim

Might it also have something to do with the fact that the cheaper dog foods are apparently not particularly palatable to dogs in their basic state, so the manufacturers add caramel so the dogs will eat it? I’ve heard this on several occasions, but I don’t know how true it is.

The last response makes my Top Ten List for the year for best concordance between SDMB thread title and respondent username. Congratulations!