Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Dog Poop

Nearly every morning, I take my two dogs, Macallan and Angelina, for a short walk for up to a mile. I do it about 355 times a year and have been doing it for ten years, so it is definitely a habit. I do it more for me now than for them, even though they are very supportive.
Mac is 85 lbs of smart stubbornness while Angelina is 45 lbs of eager energy. When I step up to the door, Angie is always the first one there. Mac has to be coaxed sometimes, but he sees it as a game where he is in control for a brief period. Sometimes I hook them up on separate leashes and occasionally I place a split-leash between them. On good days when traffic is scarce, I might let them run free for a while. It's very good exercise for them. If dogs can smile, they both would wear big ones during their free runs.
When we first reach the road at the end of the driveway, Mac likes to amble over to the far side and relieve himself. This may or may not be after he tries to urge me to go East instead of West (our usual direction). They both pee a lot at first, but they always save enough to squirt on every opportunity along the roadside.
It takes seven seconds for Mac to poop.
He may go within the first couple minutes of our walk, or he might wait until we are headed back, but he almost always leaves a pile in the swale (on the road opposite the houses usually). Angie will only poop about 1 out of 10 times during our walks. I swear it was a full two years before she ever pooped while on a leash. Dogs change.
Angie takes about 12 seconds to poop.
Even though she's a much smaller dog, she creates a pile about twice as big as Mac. I wonder about why that is, but I figure that it definitely is why she takes longer.
I read an article that dogs always poop facing in the same direction. I have found this not to be the case with my dogs. They tend to poop facing the direction we were headed, or on windy days, facing into the wind. Facing the wind seems like a smart thing to do for a creature with such a heightened sense of smell.
Forgive me for dwelling on the mundane, but I just had to get this off my chest. Plus, I hadn't made a blog entry for eons, so I took a swing.
Let me point out that I enjoy these morning walks almost as much as my doggies, but there are days when I'd rather be getting on with stuff or finishing breakfast first. On those days, I plead with Spyke to lead the parade.

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