Doing my part for our nation’s stressed economy, I’m practicing economy by combining my two unrelated questions into one thread. (If someone can find a relationship between these two topics, I will put a special sticker on your homework.)
When I take my dogs walking, of course, they smell everything, and occasionally will be RIVETED by some little (to me) nondescript clump of grass and spend many long seconds with their noses buried in the Goodness.
What is the nature/content of the DATA that they are acquiring at those times? Yeah, others dogs, to be sure… but *what about *those other dogs? My exBF always said it was what the other dogs had eaten and this was a survival mechanism to determine if there was a food supply in the area. But can you tell what other dogs have eaten from day-old pee left on a blade of grass? What *does *that old pee reveal? Or new pee, for that matter?
Also, this morning I got one of those zillion-times-forwarded messages from my Aunt C (usually I delete them without opening, *especially *when they say “do not delete-important-not a joke” in the subject line), but this had a piece of useful information and a factiod that I’d like the SDMB to verify (or not).
The useful bit is that Bayer has a quick-dissolving aspirin for when think you’re having a heart attack. In fact, my exBF (same one as mentioned above) WAS having a heart attack in 2004 after mowing the lawn, and I gave him three aspirin to chew and they saved his life. But these quick-dissolving ones sound better.
The thing I’m wondering about is that the email says “don’t lie down while you’re waiting for EMS.” Is this true? Should you not lie down? Another friend years ago had heart problems and one time had to call an ambulance, and when I got to his apartment (after he had been taken to the hospital) there was a dining room chair just inside the front door where he had SAT while waiting for EMS. That seemed odd to me at the time, but maybe it was really smart.
Well, this is typical human lack of appreciation for a truly fascinating odor. It’s piss! Another dog has been here and pissed on the grass! Wow, another dog’s bodily elimination product. Jubilee!!!
As far as not lying down during a heart attack, I don’t know of any good evidence supporting that. A sort of related ?fiction is that you shouldn’t allow people who have overdosed to fall unconscious (they supposedly should be forced to stay awake because then they won’t become comatose and die). I’d think that if you took a fatal dose of whatever, it wouldn’t matter whether you’re artificially kept awake a bit longer.
Connecting the heart attack and dog pee questions, you shouldn’t lie down if you’re having chest pain and a dog is in the room, because then it’s more likely to snag your sandwich.
That’s what I was thinking. There’s no evolutionary point to the fascination itself. But the fascination with odors makes dogs smell things, and smelling things is a valuable survival trait.
I have heard (sorry, no cite) that dogs can smell sort of in layers, getting a time-travel picture of what’s been happening. If the layers of scents are compared to a pizza, the dog is getting first the uppermost topping, then the one under that, etc. and finally smelling the crust, and then the plate. Plus they can get all kinds of info from each scent that we cannot. Where we would smell “uggh, dog pee,” the dog gets, “An hour ago, male dog, not too large, recently ate meat,” followed by “female dog, three hours ago, not in estrus,” followed by “squirrel ran through here yesterday.”
. . . and especially why we go all crazy about them chewing on things that we didn’t even think were important enough to pee on. Especially the shoes. If we would just pee on the important stuff like any sane individual the household would be a much more peaceful place. Thank goodness they got the cat. He’s apparently trained as a helper animal for the pee disabled, and has already covered the shoes and handbags. I wish he’d hurry up and get to the baseball mitts, because that’s going to cause trouble. . .
But seriously, they get tiny clues all day about what other animals live in the neighborhood. They may have heard a deep voice during the twilight bark, and now here’s the pee of a male dog, obviously tall and well-fed, and seems to have been going in the direction that bark comes from. Making the connection is exciting to them. Or there may be another dog they’ve sniffed in passing during your walks and then never seen again. Here’s proof that he’s still alive and well. And he got some cat food last night. Bonus! I’ll just leave a small dribble to say “Hi”. . .
LA Asian Escort provides LA escort you pleasant erotic adventure anytime when you feel lonely being away from home. You can always book LA escorts appointments to date out our beautiful young Asian female entertainers. We will arrange you LA asian escort to get acquainted with our beautiful elegant agents in LA. Our female entertainers are LA asian escorts not only professional and beautiful. They also come from many different backgrounds. They are happy and fun to be accompanying with, let our agents bring you the total enjoyment of life. Call us now! Let us show you how much fun you can get just being with our LA Escort.
A friend who was an EMT once told me that if the patient is in a standing or sitting position, instead of lying on the floor, it was faster & easier for them to get you onto the gurney & into the ambulance and on the way to the hospital. (Especially when about 50% of Americans are overweight.) So maybe just that little saving of time is important in an emergency.
Only I don’t see how it helps the economy anywhere:
If you are a guest, you don’t pay because you get ads; if you become a member, you pay a fixed fee. So how many posts you make is irrelevant.
If you want to save the hamsters and the SDMB servers, combining two questions also doesn’t work, because for two questions, twice the amount of people will come, read and post. So two seperate threads would be just as well or better.
If you want to save time for the Dopers reading (instead of working ;)), combining two subjects means that time is wasted if somebody is only interested in one subject. So making two seperate threads would be better.
The only connection I can see is not pee, but that some dogs can smell certain ailments in their owners and get help. There is some research that dogs can smell trouble with diabetics better and earlier than electronic sensors, and how to use that (training dogs would cost a lot of time, so improving the sensors would be preferred). But I think I also remember anecdotal stories of at least one dog who somehow got help or barked to rouse his owner at a heart attack.