An admission: I’ve long been fascinated with pooping dogs, specifically how they all will almost always look so shamed and emasculated when they go #2. Here’s something important I wrote on the subject in 2011.
…the look of shame on a pooping dog’s face is one of the funniest things there is in life. The expression on every dog’s face when it notices a human watching it take a dump roughly translates to the following: “Oh great — this as$hole’s watching me go number two. Just great. Why do I have to do this outside in pubic while the cat gets to go in a covered box in a corner of the goddamn laundry room?! And oh FABULOUS…here’s comes that cute little Pomeranian from down the street. FML. And now my owner is gonna pick up my hot, wet dooky with his hand wrapped in a plastic shopping bag. Just freakin’ GREAT!” Yes, even the biggest, baddest dog in town is hilariously emasculated by the act of pooping.
My fascination with pooping dogs grew even more when I took in a dog of my own in March of last year. The ritual it goes through each and every time it has to poop is baffling and hilarious — lots of sniffing, walking in zig-zag patterns and in circles until just the right spot to drop a dump is found. Now science has provided some insight into that why that process takes place.
Dogs are so attuned to the Earth’s magnetic field that they line up with it to relieve themselves, a new study found.
Dogs of all breeds overwhelmingly prefer to do their business facing north-south, not east-west, according to research detailed in the journal Frontiers of Zoology.
Why pooches point toward the poles when they pee and poop is still a mystery. But researchers confirmed they do by studying 70 dogs representing 37 breeds and diligently observing more than 7,000 canine bathroom breaks over two years.
And all this time I thought they were just trying to work themselves into positions that provided for the most minimal amount of eye contact with humans and other dogs.