Better Than Cheese

The Woo-man recently posted about how much his dogs love cheese. Like his mutts, my own Libby and Cocoa adore cheese. They'll take American, Cheddar, Colby, Shredded, Mozzarella, whatever is held in front of them. When I peel open a slice of American Cheese Food, they both get up on their hind legs and do their happy dance. Then I ask, "Who's sitting first?" The first one to sit gets the first piece. If I was as happy in a week as they are in that one minute, I'd be the happiest person on Earth.

But my dogs like one thing even more than they like cheese.

I'm not really a dog person so I didn't know this until we got our first dog three years ago. One day Libby was in the living room and I was petting her and thinking, "Gawd, your breath smells like crap." I thought it was just really bad breath. She left the room, I left the room. Several moments later we were both back and I started smelling poop again - cat poop. I looked up and that dog was chewing on a cat turd. I thought I'd puke. To stop the nonsense, the husband built a dog barrier around our kitty litter several years ago. The big dog is definitely too big for it, but when we got Cocoa, we realized she was small enough to get in the hole. It is now blocked with a giant laundry detergent box, although we don't really need it because the dogs are nearly always in the sunroom because they stink something awful.

I got tired of smelling them (plus had a really good closing this week), so today they went to Classy Clips for grooming. They were bathed, teeth brushed, nails clipped, etc. and looked (and smelled) so pretty when I brought them home that I let them back in the house. After about 5 hours of scratching their backs and bellies, Cocoa disappeared. I was suspicious, but not overly worried because of said kitty litter barrier hole now blocked by the big detergent box.

I walk into the kitchen looking for Cocoa and she's in the middle of the floor chowing down on cat crap!!! How did she get it, I wondered, as I yelled, "NO! BAD DOG!" and banished her back to the sunroom. Cleaned it up (I love those new Clorox wipes) and started looking in the laundry room. Here's what I've figured out: the little dog climbs onto the laundry detergent, hops up to the top of the barrier, steps over on the top of the kitty litter pan, drops to the floor, sticks her head in the opening, and picks up her delicacy. Then she carries it back over the barrier to eat it on the kitchen floor. (Gagging.)

I wanted to get to the bottom of why cat poop is a delicacy to dogs, so I consulted with the Great and Powerful Ivy (not that she's all knowing when it comes to dogs eating cat poop). Her theory is a good one, though. She said her veterinarian blames the cat food - it has more protein and dogs love the protein, so they eat the cat poop. The Scoop on Poop said the same thing and added:

"Dogs are particularly fond of cat poop because cat poop is high in protein. I had a friend with a dog and a cat, and he never had to clean the kitty litter. The dog took care of it."

So the protein theory is the one I'm going to hang my hat on. It's so much better than dogs are just stupid.

While researching the poop issue, I also learned about why they roll in it (along with dead, rotting things). According to the Encyclopaedia we call the Internet, it masks the their own scent so they can hunt their prey with much more ease. There's a good reason I like cats.