I have a friend who owns a very endearing dog who sadly, lost one of his hind legs in an accident, and who is now obviously tripodal.
Observing the dog the other day going about his business in the park led me to idle speculation as to whether male dogs in general tend to raise one leg in preference to the other when having a pee, and if so, would that be the right leg or the left leg, or …are they just opportunist ambidextrous pee-ers, and it all depends on which side the lamp-post happens to be ?
What would be peachy would be if any owners of male dogs would register their dog’s preference for the raised leg, and then we would have a set of data which could be analysed statistically to determine whether dogs are predominantly left footed or right footed …
Well he isn’t, but to answer the question I think he is pretty ambidextrous when off the lead, and mostly raises his left leg when on the lead because I walk him on my left.
Our newly acquired mixed mutt raises his right leg mostly. We walk him (off leash) out in the woods behind our house. He does seem to be ambidickstrous though, as he lifts the left leg if the object being peed on (usually just a tree) is on that side when we’re walking.
Pee - squats down, no leg usually
One of 50 sprays on a walk if I let him - has a preference for lifting the left. He can left the right, but often if he comes to a object on his right, he will walk up to it, lift the right, put it back down, and circle around until he can find a place for approaching the bush/rock/house on the right.
I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has done a study. I believe a recent thread talked about cat paw preference as a function of gender.
Cin lifts his right. He does this thing where he finds something to pee on and does a quick lift of the left, but nothing comes out, then has to do this annoying convoluted turn around thing.
He also usually misses the spot he was trying to hit.
My border collie cross is getting really old and arthritic now, so he just stands there, essentially. We keep his tummy fur trimmed so it doesn’t get messy.
I don’t remember all that well how he used to pee, but when he tries to lift a leg now, it’s usually the left. That may be because his arthritis is worse in the right leg, but it’s hard to say.
Blackjack’s getting pretty old, and both his hind legs have been injured, so he only raises a leg now when there’s something really important to pee on. I think it’s usually the right leg, but I may be projecting, I lift my right leg to pee.
Mine’s a terrier-Maltese mix. I have never seen him raise a leg, he just pees like a girl. Maybe it’s because he knows he’d pee all over his own fur if he tried to raise a leg.
Neither.
We have corgis. The male would lift either, and when we got the female, she had been confined to a cage in a puppy mill all her life. She learned from watching him and she started to lift her leg too. It was pretty funny, but they have such short legs it really doesn’t make much difference.
Now he’s old, +/- 15, and he doesn’t waste much effort on that kind of thing. And she’s gone back to peeing like a girl too. She’s going on 11.
Delmar (Chihuahua): Right hind leg when marking, but pees “like a girl” (squatting) otherwise. He’s kinda old.
Reese (Dachshund): He prefers his right hind leg, but it depends on which side the object is on that he is peeing on. Unlike Delmar, he will not pee without an object, even if that object is a tall blade of grass or a slightly raised cover on a bed.
Both also seem to prefer their right front leg when shaking hands. But that could be how we subconsciously trained them.
