You may have seen your dog kick their hind legs after pooping.
Many pet parents wonder if their dog is trying – without success – to bury their poop.
Sometimes your dog may actually manage to throw some grass on it, but most of the time, the poo will still be in the open air.
is your dog try Bury their poo, and if so, why are they so scary?
Why do dogs kick grass after pooping
After pooping, both Matilda and the cow went into a frenzy of kicking.
Just this morning, Cow kicked straight into her poo, kicking it between her toes with her hind paws. This is the third time she has managed to do this. Usually I can get her to move aside before kicking. But if I wasn’t fast enough, I ended up having to wash her poo feet off before letting her go back inside.
Why would a dog try to get poop on her feet? Why doesn’t she avoid washing her feet?
Now that we have a cat, I can see how easy it is for animals to successfully bury their waste. It’s not difficult. Why is my dog so bad at this?
While we can’t directly ask our dogs why they do this, we can look at contextual cues such as anatomy, behavior of other animals, and situational variables to get a good guess at what might be going on.
Stool smell markers?
You may know that some dogs, especially male dogs, leave territorial scent marks by raising their legs to urinate on vertical objects.
But did you know that poop also helps dogs mark territory?
Each time the dog poops, two glands on either side of the anus empty, releasing a pungent, fishy-smelling oily fluid. If your dog releases a horrible odor when nervous or excited, you may be familiar with anal gland fluid.
Anal gland fluid is a scent marker that all dogs, male and female, leave behind wherever they go.
So it makes sense that dogs want their poo to be noticed rather than hidden. They want other dogs to know “I’m here,” characteristic of poop, anal gland odor.
Some animal behavior experts speculate that kicking after poop is one way dogs help spread the scent further.
Scent glands in the paws?
Do dogs sweat? kind of.
Dogs have two types of sweat glands. They have apocrine glands that are found throughout the body. Apocrine glands release sweat into the hair follicles, keeping your dog’s coat naturally moisturised and conditioned.
Merocrine sweat glands release sweat directly to the surface of the skin. These are the sweat glands we humans use to help keep us cool. Dogs have only this type of sweat glands on their paws. So, the dog sweats visibly only from the paw pads. I haven’t seen this happen in practice, and a small percentage of dogs actually sweat profusely through their paws.
The main purpose of the mercury glands in dog paws may be to leave additional scent marks.
As a result, your dog may kick his legs after pooping to get the scent out of the sweat glands in his paws.
zoom after poo
Zoomies or crazy random activity periods (FRAPs) are when the dog “goes crazy” and runs in circles. You may have seen this after you bathed your dog.
Fanatical activity is often triggered by pent-up stress. When the dogs are finally released after a bath, they may run around and shake, rub, and run off all the water frantically.
Pooping can also relieve stress, and may cause the dog to go a little crazy afterward. This is probably why dogs go mad with kicks.
kick other dogs
I’ve noticed that on a typical walk, my dog may kick a few times after pooping, but that’s about it.
They kick more when there are other dogs around, especially when we are in a different setting like a park.
To me, this is strong evidence that dogs kick because they want other dogs to notice. It’s their way of saying, “Here I am! I’m exhausted!”
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As a dog mom to Matilda and Cow, she spends most of her time walking long distances and practicing new tricks, trying to make the most of a small portion of her bed most nights.
You’ll also find her baking bread and homemade pizza, laughing, painting and shopping.
