The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs

by Patricia B. McConnell

Dogs who urinate or defecate in the house have a hard time resisting the chemical “sign” on your carpet that says “Go here!” Just because it’s written in odor doesn’t make it less compelling. Even dogs who were actually “house-trained” have pottied in the house because the dogs defined “house” differently than their owners. We define “house” as bordered by walls, but most dogs seem to define “house” as where you spend your time and therefore where the pack’s scent is the strongest. Many of my clients’ dogs only went in the back guest room, a place with none of the familiar odors of the family. In most of those cases, simply eliminating the odor of urine and then marking the area with a different scent can get the dog going in the right rest room again. Once the area is odor-free and clean, sit down on the carpet with your dog and a paperback and spend a little time each day there. In just a few days, that place will smell like a living room instead of a toilet to your pup. It also helps tremendously to give your dog a treat every time that she goes outside—right after she goes, not after she trots back to the house. I’m always a bit surprised at how resistant so many owners are to doing this. Once our dogs are no longer puppies, we seem to have some sense of entitlement that grown-up dogs should go outside, because “they should know better.” But if they’re going to the bathroom in the house, you can either get upset about it and put on a threat display as any agitated prim...

would never pretend that I understand what is going on in the brain of my dogs when they’re rolling in fox poop. And of course, it’s not just fox feces that gets my dogs’ attention. To all dogs, the stinkier the smell, the more attractive the object, including dead fish; fresh, sloppy cow pies (the more liquid, the better); and partially dried squirrel bodies. Maggots are a plus, a value-added commodity in canine economics. It’s impossible not to imagine that dogs enjoy themselves when they’re rolling in slime. Their eyes begin to glaze, their mouths droop in a relaxed grin as they duck their shoulders and grind their backs into some foul, rotting mess. After satisfying themselves that they are properly anointed, they trot home with the high-headed, confident stride we might adopt when life is good and the day is ours.

Bulldog or a Pug, results from an abnormal shortening of the facial bones, called brachycephaly. Considered a severe disability in humans, it’s caused by a mutation that interferes with the essential processes of life: breathing and keeping your brain at the right temperature. This may look endearing to some people, but the dogs’ well-being is compromised. Dogs like Bulldogs simply can’t breathe or pant normally, as owners who have listened to them snore at night or tried to go jogging with them can attest. By shortening their muzzles, we’ve created nasal passages that can’t do their job and a jaw that can barely hold all of its teeth.