And why only some breeds? I know, or at least I assume it’s to cover their scent so any marauding predators in the region can’t track them. The problem with this is that the dog only kicks a few times, and on whatever it happens to be standing on. Kicking backwards fairly randomly 4 or 5 times doesn’t even begin to mask a scent, let alone cover it. The kicking on grass I can only assume is because there’s no nice sand or soil like there used to be wherever the breed originated. The kicking only a few times I’m guessing is because it’s watered down by domestication from the primal instinct, which perhaps had the animal (wolf?) kick many times in a more directed effort.
And why do only some breeds do it?
For those of you who haven’t seen this phenomenon, the dog walks a few steps forward and rakes the ground back with its hind legs.
Has anyone ever seen a wolf or wild dog do this? Do they do it better? I assume that none of them actually bury it, because burying is done with front paws and I doubt that the instinct would have changed enough to go from front to back. Besides, they’d then almost certainly get the scent on their paws, which would defeat the purpose. My dogs didn’t do this growing up, so I’ve only been wondering about this recently.
I read somewhere (sorry, no cite) that they do it not to cover the scent, but to spread it. It makes them “look” bigger to other dogs who will come along later and “read” the pee for information. One of my dogs does this, and she always seems pretty excited and proud of herself when she’s doing it. I’ve also only seen this behavior in small dogs.
I was told that they have scent glands (or whatever they’re called) in the pads of their paws and they rub it on the ground to add to the scent they leave.
Wait, do they do this after pooping, or just peeing? Do dogs take dumps to mark territories? I guess it makes sense that they would be trying to spread a scent rather than mask it. Still waiting for someone to chime in on wolf behavior.
My male Boxer does this and my female mutt does not. I think males do this more than females do. I wish the Boxer would quit doing it, though. He doesn’t step forward enough sometimes and gets his paws poopy.
Well, yes, of course, but the scratching the ground is not done intending to smear the scent of the poo around. It’s a separate marking behavior. My intact male will occasionally mark his toys this way if he leaves them out in the yard. Not pooping on them , scratching around where he leaves them.
Yup, along with the big slashes in the ground as a visual display.
I’d have to pay for the full PDF, but from the abstract:
…originally connected with territoriality. Both sexes have anal scent glands and may scratch the ground after defecation. The micturition pattern differs between the sexes.
Cats have a similar motion which appears to be covering the effluent. I always thought dogs were inspired by the same instinct as cats, but they were less efficient.
My (55-lb female) dog scratches after poop or pee. But, strangely, she only started doing it when she reached about a year in age. We often wondered whether it’s a behavior that just surfaced at that age, or if she was mimicking the large male dogs she hung out with at the time.
I’ve got two female American Eskimos, one is three and the other is about 8. Only the older girl does this and I believe she only does it after pooping. She doesn’t even scratch near where the turds are, she takes a few steps sideways and then does her turf scratching about a half-dozen times and then goes back to smell the area she just scratched. Odd, and the younger one hasn’t picked up the routine yet.
