Thursday, April 25, 2013

Dobbie The Disgusting

I promise, there's a post coming, but I had to share the latest bit of dog psychology I have been given the pleasure to watch in action.

I have been reading about dogs and their amazing sense of smell.

Dogs can smell another dog's poo and tell if that dog is big, small, male or female, neutered or not.

This of course points out the incredible difference between dogs and us. We don't smell poo beyond the fresh and not fresh stage, even though our noses are essentially non-functioning compared to our dogs. I wonder if poo would smell better if we simply understood it's complexities, like learning to appreciate the difference between a Shiraz and a Merlot.

Dobby, the kidlette's dog has quite the nose, and in many ways, he is the ultimate definition of why people hate small dogs. He is shrill, shivery, nervous, jumpy, a notorious marker of chair legs and curtains, and carries a huge Napoleon complex on his tiny little shoulders. He also smiles and walks like a man, so he can be very unsettling. (recently learned Mugs Fact: small dogs mark in the house more often than large dogs because they have a smaller concept of territory).


Smile for Grandma!


He is a rescue with an unknown background, so who knows what baggage he's carrying.

Dobby has improved so much since the kidlette adopted him. He comes when called, is well-behaved off leash, heels like a Schutzhund graduate and  only pees on stuff when we aren't looking.

"You can't look at Dobby as a dog," and ex-boyfriend of kidlette's explained to the non-Dobby loving current one, "it's better if you think of him as a creature. I did, and we got along fine. Besides, if you want to love Clare, you have to love Dobby."

She's a kid after my own heart, she is.

The kidlette and I were on a walk with our dogs yesterday. Our mini-power- pack consists of Charlie, my middle-aged Rat Terrier, Brockle, my large and boisterous GSD mix and Dobby, the kidlette's Italian Greyhound/ Min Pin cross.

Dinah and Snocone are dodderers and dawdlers, so they walk with Jim.

We like to play along Fountain Creek at Monument Valley Park.

There's a trail below the actual park, part of the homeless highway that winds through the city. We can safely let the dogs loose and stay out of trouble. Neither the police or the leash-law abiding citizens like to hang out down there.

It's fun to watch, because the tiny terrors attack poor Brockle with incredible fury. Charlie will actually grab his collar and choke him down if I don't keep an eye out. Dobby barks and bites, barks and bites. I would feel sorry for Brockle if he didn't clearly think it funny. He teases them to a complete frenzy then jumps into the icy water, knowing the little sissies won't follow. As soon as they calm down he jumps out and launches at them, going scooter-butt at 100 mph until they're nuts again.

We were walking down our favorite trail when the dogs flew by. First Brockle, with a huge grin and a wicked glint in his eye, then Charlie, honing in on his collar like it was a baby pigeon on it's first flight, and then...no Dobby.

We turned to look behind us and saw Dobby rolling in something.

"Oh no," the kidlette said.

"I'm sure it's something gross," I replied.

"I know what it is." The loo on a girl's face while watching her boyfriend puke in the alley behind a bar was plastered on the kidlette's.

"Brockle dumped a giant smelly load back there."

"It was too big for my plastic bags, I couldn't pick it up," I said. Nothing like being busted for ignoring my dog's poo during Earth Week. I knew I was destined for hell.

"Oh, it's getting picked up, Dobby's rolling in it." (recently learned Mugs Fact: small dogs will roll in large dogs excrement so they smell "bigger" to other dogs).

We watched in horror as the little troll stood up, gave himself a satisfied shake and came running towards us at full speed. The smell hit a good twenty five yards ahead of him. There is a price to pay when you run out of your regular dog food and buy a cheap bag of whatever to hold until you can get to Big R. A very high price. Brockle's unsettled stomach had delivered a mother load of runny, hunter's orange, mud bath for Dobby. Yep, I was going to hell and not getting to serve my sentences concurrently.

His white chest had turned orange, he had a clump of Brockle poo hanging from one ear. There was poo smeared and caked all over his harness and collar. The little ogre had a huge grin and proud strut as he trotted, sneezing, past my two dogs. Neither seemed bothered, but I didn't see any sign of, "Hey, check it out, Dobby's as big as a Rottweiler!"

He's just started doing that," the kidlette said with a sad shake of her head. "I don't know what his problem is."

We finished our walk, dreading getting into the car. Dobby pranced, danced, and attacked Brockle with enthusiasm. Before long he had long tufts of Brockle hair hanging from his chin and stuck to his chest. He was almost insane with delight over his warrior costume. Clouds of poo perfume hung in the air around us.

Please note the tufts of Brockle hair glued to his chest and neck with poo.
Sorry about the photo quality--it was getting dark.






We carefully maneuvered Dobby into the car and tied hi down. I then drove a good 10 mpg over the speed limit to get the kidlette and her gross little Gollum home and into the shower. I figured any cop who pulled us over would take one whiff and give us an escort. As we rolled the windows as far down as they could go I realized that there would be no waiting. I had already entered hell.

24 comments:

  1. Cheap dog food poo is the worst. I always have the makings of dog food around (mainly because my small dog eats anything, including paper and baby's socks, and needs extra moisture and fiber to push it out). Equal parts of brown rice or barley or oatmeal; chicken, lamb or salmon; green beans, carrots or sweet potatoes. I cook it together and run it through the Cuisinart. If my dog has eaten something he shouldn't, I'll add more water and green beans. It keeps them very happy, and keeps their tummys from getting upset. I tried liver once, but the farts were atrocious.

    I've had more than a few of the open window rides myself. I think deer poo is the worst.

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  2. Oohhh my goodness. This is the most amazing story every.

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  3. I can not get the "OOOOOhhhh DISGUSTING!" look off my face! Blech! And I think Dobby is the perfect name for that little creature. :)

    My own can-do-no-wrong perfect angel of a dog who has never rolled in anything before (although she does seem to like the taste of horse poop, the greener the better) has recently found something dead up on our hill and has taken to rolling in it for the past 3 nights. Last night, I'd had enough and she spent her first night ever outside. I just could not stomach giving her 110 lbs. a bath AGAIN this week! Thank GOD I didn't have to ride in a car with her!

    I loved your recently-learned facts! They make so much sense, but I never realized or really thought about it before. It was a total "OMG, of course!" moment when I read those!

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  4. So funny and then not all at the same time.
    My dog Mason, does not roll in it, but he see's poo (preferably the poo of his favorite girl Dakota- my ex's chocolate lab) and says, "Ooh a snack!"
    And then wonders why I yell at him when he tries to lick me.
    Gotta love dogs!

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  5. I completely feel your pain. My husband's border collie used to do that and she was very long haired. We could always smell her long before she was back at the house and I swear she looked just like a big lion with her neck hair stuck straight out and globs of poop hanging and dropping off it. At least Dobby is short haired!

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  6. Redhorse - I have to disagree with you, bear poop is WAY worse then deer, especially when its smeared into a large dog and you have no tub, so he has to have an outside bath with the garden hose. There was no way I was putting him in the truck to take him to the pet wash after that little adventure.

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  7. how many of us were eating dinner while reading this post? just me? if we might still compare smells, i would like to enter 1. deer musk on the shores of the oregon, and 2. cat territory spray on my tires that i have to transport IN the car twice a year to have exchanged (by law, we must have winter tires on in winter in germany). i will spend the next 2 weeks trying to air the car of the cat smell from the tires.

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  8. Not really related, but your last paragraph reminded me of when we moved from VA to CA when I was in high school. My dad was pulled over somewhere in the middle of the country for speeding. The cop took one look at the dog, three cats (one yelling continuously) and two kids all crammed into a Jeep Cherokee, told my Dad to drive slower and sent us on our way.

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  9. Serves you right, poop-abandoner!

    I live thousands of miles away, but I actively felt the skin on my hands try to crawl away when I imagined having to touch Dobby in all his glory.

    In other news: I learned something today, re: the poop rolling.

    Now I want to know: Why do dogs roll in dead things? Are other dogs as scared of zombies as we are?

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  10. Bwahahaha! Love the photo of Dobby all his glory. I'm so glad my Iggies are girly girls. Cat poo kisses are as bad as they get, and that's bad enough.

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  11. I had a friend who loved to let his dog give him big kisses right on the lips until he came out and saw my dog lapping up yummy calf scours straight from the source. No I do not let my dog lick me.

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  12. Skittle, you got me there. I've never run into bear poop, although I understand they do sh!t in the woods.

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  13. Oh no. And I though my dog having crazy overnight diarrhea in my office was bad...

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  14. I don't know your rationale, but I call BS on the small dogs peeing inside because of the smaller sense of territory. Don't quite buy the poop-rolling one either.

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  15. My RuckusButt, are we in a mood?

    I am simply sharing information learned from accepted experts who write books.

    I could reference them, but this isn't high school or the newspaper, so I don't have to.

    If, through experience, or information that makes more sense to me, I'll be sure to write about it.

    Until then, call it what you want...but keep it to yourself, OK?

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  16. We call bear poop, bear jam around here. When the berries are in season it looks like someone has gone around dumping jam on the trails. The grizzly poop we saw in Alaska actually looked more like horse poop than anything. Apparently they like their greens.

    My dog Dixie is the queen of stink. She will roll and eat any kind of poop she can find which looks amazing on her white coat. She was in heaven the day she ripped open a big garbage bag full of diapers. Anything dead or rotten is also a favorite.
    The morning she went to the vet's to be spayed she found a spot where the cat had left a fresh treasure outside and covered herself with rank cat pee/poop smell... Her worst stink attack... The horse poop burps! I'm far from squeamish but, oh wow, getting a blast of that in the face is something else. The insane thing is she hates mud. I have lots of poop stories from working with dogs too... Last year someone came in handed a little dog to my boss left. The little dog had a brand new little doggie shirt on and looked clean, but she stunk! My boss took the shirt off to find her whole back covered in some kind of poop. They were too shamed to tell us so they tried to hide it lol... Like the groomer wasn't going to notice!

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  17. Ewww. Never knew that about small dogs (thank god).

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  18. The thing is--it isn't all small dogs. We have three littluns at home.Dinah is a grubby dog, she likes to roll in stuff, but not dog poo. Horse, bear, dead lizard, she's all over it. I always thought it was to disguise her scent from prey. She's the best ratter I've ever had.Charlie is finicky and doesn't roll much. Snocone, the tiniest, is a mill dog, so rolling isn't even a concept for her, she's still contemplating play.
    Brockle, the biggest,doesn't roll in anything--so far.
    From the grin on all dogs faces when they stink, all I know is it makes them really happy to smell funky.
    BTW -- About the theory on territory size for small male dogs -- after I read this I began deliberately taking visiting small male dogs (there are two) outside to tour the pee range of my biggest dog, and the peeing in the house was cut down about 80%, the rest seems to come from being stressed.I make sure the first thing they do is tour the outside perimeters of my yard and they leave my couch alone.

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  19. i was walking my Catahoula through the neighborhood a few years ago and walked over what i thought was sprinkler water on the sidewalk. however it was a leaking sewer drain clean-out. the dog did an instant nose dive and rolled all through it . she was covered with brown bits and pieces of toilet paper and beyond happy. luckily a block away a man was washing his car in the street and i asked him to blast the dog with the hose so i could get her home and in the shower without throwing up from the smell.

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  20. You know what I always say... There's no such thing as a bad smell to a dog.

    (Including themselves!)

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  21. That is as good a story as Clyde's when he had to rescue the dog from the manmade lake of pig leavings, you can just consider the smell about the same!

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  22. wow - I can almost smell that stench from your description!! lol I haven't had a dog around much in the past couple of years, so have been spared the major stinkiness...

    Although we had my f-i-l's border collie for the winter and since it was all snowy here, we thought we would be free from stinkiness. This dog is a bit fussy about her coat and doesn't usually roll. Until we had a thaw and she found some skunk/racoon poop. Yeah. It was gross.

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  23. I think I would have dunked Dobie in the river a few times before getting in the car, and I always try to have extra towels in the truck just for such things. Our Great Pyr would roll in sheep poo, I guessed all part of the
    pretending to be a sheep thing.

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  24. Someone gave my mom a cartoon drawing of a dog's brain. It was all divided up into little sections for scratching, chasing cats, etc., big section for loyalty, and then, right in the middle, "Love of the Putrid"! Yep - it's hard-wired :)

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