My JRT is always interested in sniffing other dog’s output on his walks, which I understand, as he can pick up a lot of information about them that way, but occasionally, if he comes across something really nasty, like the dead baby bird that I really should have gotten off our lawn days ago, he wants to roll over it. Why? Just me, but if my sense of smell were so acute, I would be rolling in jasmine and lilies of the valley and the like, not trying to get the most hideous stenches all over me.
Clearly, I’m missing a crucial part of the enchantment here, but what is it?
When Jr Intergalactic Gladiator #1 (I’ll call her Kiera) was a baby, our dog loved the diapers.
Kiera was breast fed and the contents of the diaper smelled just like butter. I assume they tasted kind of like that too, but I didn’t check personally.
Yes. It’s not just dogs that do this, it’s other predators as well. It’s better to smell like rotten stuff or dung than to smell like a predator. Lions, for example, will roll in elephant droppings.
You can’t assume that what smells “bad” to us smells unpleasant to dogs. Obviously dogs have different criteria. Maybe jasmine and lilies of the valley smell nauseating to them.
This could be why our beast looks depressed after getting a bath with shampoo and conditioner.
The worst offender among our dogs all-time was the cocker spaniel who found a heap of unmistakably human poop* during a park outing and rolled in it before we could stop her.
It takes a long time to drive home when you have to tie your dog to the rear bumper.
*Could’ve been Bigfoot, I suppose.
Yep, I have to add my own story here. I once thought it would be a good idea to take our new dog, a corgi, down to a park/reserve near our house that allowed horses. It was late in the day and there were no other dogs or horses around, so I decided to let her go off leash and run around to tire her out because I only had about 20 minutes before I had some kind of appointment.
I will never forget what happened next as it destroyed my entire evening and scarred me for life. There was an enormous pile of horse shit almost as big as the dog that looked to have been shoveled into a pile. When the dog got a whiff of that, she bee-lined right for it and literally dove into it covering herself. I had never seen anything quite like that. I had leather seats and we were too far away to walk home, so I had to put her in the car. Let’s see - I had to throw out my clothes, wash the dog several times to get the shit out, and then clean my car interior thoroughly several times. You never really can get the shit out of the stitching in the leather no matter how hard you try. That 20 minutes escapade took over 6 hours of backbreaking decontamination to clean up. I have been very reluctant to ever let her off leash again.
I have a distinct recollection of our childhood dog absconding with my mother’s used sanitary napkin . . . and my mother frantically trying to get it away from him. I didn’t know what it was at the time.
Going for a walk with my Labrador in the woods and suddenly being contaminated by the nauseating stinking whiff of human poop on which he rolled over having filled his collar with that disgusting vomit inducing “paste” , makes me wonder what the heck I want a dog for.
It’s the fourth time it happens. :mad:
The first time, we were at the beach. He was covered with poop from his head to mid back and I had no idea how it happened. His collar was totally covered leaving no choice but to hold it with my bare hands. How was I going to drive back home with that creature loaded with shit?!
I took him down to the water to wash it off but he was scared of the waves and wouldn’t go close enough.
It was a nightmare to forget.
Having gone through this situation for the fourth time today will make me reconsider letting him stroll around freely in our future walks.
More or less what I’ve heard; that a main reason dogs do this is to carry the scent back to the pack. They can’t tell the pack what they’ve found after all.
If you’re lucky enough to be on the beach or in an area with the right soil, sand is a pretty good cleaner. Rub it through the coat and it will remove at least some of the stench. I did this after dogs rolled in dead magpie and it did a good enough job for me to get them home on the bus without inducing mass vomiting. Any dry soil might do at a pinch.
