LIVING in the country has its virtues; it has sure breathed new life into my senior canines.
Overall, they have become much more relaxed, less reactive; yet they are both more playful with each other and with me.
There is one behaviour that has cropped up that I am not the least pleased with. Piper has developed a penchant for rolling in things, the smellier the better.
When we lived in an urban environment, Piper was the kind of dog that didn't even like to get his feet muddy, unless it involved pointing out a duck at the local pond. Now, on any given day, he is often covered in some of the most ranksmelling substances known to mankind. It's true that living on acreage that has horses, cows and chickens gives him the opportunity, but it doesn't make it any easier to accept or understand.
There are many theories as to why dogs roll in smelly things such as rotting carcasses, feces, garbage etc.
One suggests that a dog rolls in the smelly substance as a way of telling other members of his pack that he has found something interesting and worthy of their attention. Recently Piper rolled in a dead opossum, but he certainly wasn't trying to share to with me. After he rolled in it, he lifted his leg and marked it and if I didn't tell him to leave it, he would have dragged it off to some spot and buried it.
Which leads to . . . the next theory, which suggests that the rolling behaviour over a dead carcass or animal feces has less to do with placing the smell on themselves and more to do with placing their smell on the stinky object, just as if they are marking it as their territory.
Dogs will use urine and feces to mark territory as well as scratch their feet, leaving scent on the ground from the pads of their feet. Like cats, dogs will sometimes rub up against trees or their humans to leave their scent behind as a form of marking territory.
In essence they are letting other dogs know they found the smelly thing first!
Given the close genetic relation between wolves and dogs there would have to be some behavioural link between the two to explain this unusual behaviour.
Wolves, being carnivores and hunters, must stalk their prey in stealthy fashion, as many of their targets, like antelope or elk, have great speed and reactive senses that make hunting them difficult.
Prey animals are familiar with their own odour and can smell a wolf a mile away. It's possible that wolves roll in animal feces or carrion as a way of masking their predator odour. Then they can sneak up close to their prey without being detected.
Dogs express this behaviour, not because they are actually hunting, but because the smell of a rotting carcass or animal feces somehow triggers that latent instinct of needing to mask their odour in order to be a successful hunter. It's kind of like the guy who slathers on cologne before he walks out the door, even if he's not trying to meet a woman . . . sort of.
The last theory makes the most sense in describing the behaviour of our domesticated wolves. Dogs may roll in smelly stuff as a reminder to themselves of something very interesting and worthy of memory, sort of the way humans tattoo themselves. To me this could possibly be the best explanation as Piper was more than pleased with himself for the way he smelled.
There are probably many more explanations and they all may be correct to some degree. We may never know the real reason why dogs enjoy rolling in disgusting, malodourous materials. What we do know is that what is unusual and repulsive to us makes perfect sense to dogs, and that mystery is part of what makes them so much fun to be around.
