You arrive home after hours away and your sweet pup is waiting to give you a tail-wagging, face-slurping greeting the moment you set foot inside the door. Such a sweet ritual. But how sweet is it really? I hate to ruin a good thing, but when it comes right down to it, your lovable dog has some gross habits and has likely done some really disgusting things with its mouth. If your pup was given half a chance, it has dedicated every second you were away to rooting out the nastiest things available. Things you don’t even want to think about.
Let’s start with the obvious: trash. Most dog households need to secure the kitchen trash lest the pup raid it. Imagine what a dog must be thinking about us humans keeping a neat container of smelly trash right there in the kitchen! It’s like we’re daring the dog to explore it. We throw out empty and not-so-empty containers of everything from milk and fruit to meat. If something spoiled or went past its prime, where does it go? The trash, of course. And we keep adding to it, piling in eggshells and crumbs, meat grease and every type of packaging known to man. As the days go by with more and more added in, the result is an irresistible concoction of putrid smells. As far as a dog is concerned, the smellier the better. Turn your back for a minute and temptation just might get the better of your pup’s conscience.
“ …humans will be humans and make mistakes, and dogs will be dogs and take advantage of our humanity.”
We use a hand weight to keep the lid from being nudged open. When this little safety measure has been overlooked, we come home to an unpleasant scattering of coffee grounds mixed with chewed meat trays, those little pads glued to the Styrofoam, and orange peels. This initiates a forced game of “guess what this used to be” along with an assessment of whether what she presumably consumed is toxic.
This also applies to bathroom trashcans. I think all humans can agree that there is nothing tossed in a bathroom trashcan that should be dragged out again. Dental floss and empty toothpaste tubes are the least of it. It’s not exactly fun to pick up used Q-tips, chewed up Kleenex, or disinfectant wipes. Many mountain properties have septic tanks, which discourages the flushing of feminine hygiene products. This takes bathroom trashcan security to a whole new level, especially for households like ours where 5 females lived for many years. Three bathrooms, five females and three dogs will mandate some serious trashcan diligence. During that phase of life, we managed to find a pedal-opening bathroom trash can that was the perfect height to tuck underneath the toilet water tank, therefore prohibiting the lid from being opened by the dogs. As long as it was safely tucked away, we could count on avoiding problems. But… humans will be humans and make mistakes, and dogs will be dogs and take advantage of our humanity. We were fooling ourselves. We were never truly safe.
Because there’s no inventory on what gets tossed out, if something goes missing from the trashcan, how are you to know? Well, one indication can be found in dog waste. Non-food items generally go straight through the digestive system of your pup. At least, you hope it does. Any vet will tell you that sometimes they eat things that create blockages, which requires medical intervention. If it goes through their system, it gets deposited out in nature. If you find some suspicious-looking items in your dog’s waste, it’s a prompt to ramp up the trashcan diligence. I can attest that picking through your dog’s waste with a stick to identify what they ingested in a bathroom trashcan raid will make you think twice about those slurpy dog kisses.
There are other nasty things found in nature that your pup finds irresistible. More things you don’t want to think about. Basically, our dogs are the descendants of wolves; carnivores to their core. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that a carcass of any size is always a draw. It paints a funny picture imagining a big deer carcass surrounded by pet dogs rather than wolves. Just for giggles, picture a Pomeranian, a teacup Poodle, and a Golden Retriever all hunkered over a deer carcass like it’s a buffet. If it was available and they had access, you can bet they’d do just that. But first, they’d likely roll in it, smearing the contents of the bloated stomach cavity into their fur and then proudly marching it right into the house. I can almost hear the squealing that would ensue. I can almost hear it because I’ve been in that exact situation and can attest that there will be squealing and other varieties of noisy objections. You cannot usher a carcass-goo-covered dog outside fast enough.
Last year, our Daisy strutted across the room unnoticed, coming to a stop in the center of the rug, where she spat out a mangled squirrel. That got our attention. It was dead, of that there was no doubt, and freshly mangled, landing with a soft thud in the shape of a wet ball. Eeeeew! She was clearly proud of herself, sharing her conquest like a cat. We weren’t as pleased as she hoped, especially when we discovered that she had done the mangling on our bed. Double eeew! First, we (hubby) had to remove the wet dead thing and then strip the bed and remake it with fresh bedding at an inconveniently late hour. Clearly, humans are not descendants of wolves. I’m sure her view was that we were taking away all the best parts of dead things—the wallowing around in it while it goes through every stage of rotting. Hard pass.
And speaking of taking a hard pass, the next time your sweet pup wants to cover your face with wet, slurpy kisses, imagine what they’ve been doing with their mouth all day. Kisses or no kisses, trash bandits or carcass-rollers, there’s no denying that despite their faults, we still harbor big love for our dogs.
