What’s with all the Dog Pee?

What’s with all the Dog Pee?

Do dogs mark their territory with pee?

Are dogs checking their ’email’ when sniffing the urinated bark of a eucalyptus tree?

Are dogs revelling in the release of stress on the smelling of another dog’s wee?

Compatriot in the blogosphere Kate Shrewsday from England recently alerted her readers to a study in Psychology Today that attempts to wipe the dog owner blackboard clean of fanciful theories of canine intelligence and wizzing behaviour 😉

The ‘study’, if you can call it that (I would call it a musing) puts forward the thesis that dogs are deficit in the grey matter department and are merely reacting to bodily signals of stress, rather than marking territory and other silly theories put forward by the dog loving ignoramus contingent.

The author Lee Charles Kelley’s logic can certainly be argued against (and I would if I could be bothered) or cherry picked for the affirmative. But I would rather just throw up a poem I wrote some time ago (and I will be consulting with Labradoodles Jazz and Sheba to develop a more comprehensive and palatable theory of my own). 🙂

Social networking for dogs

Bum sniffing beasties

whiffing their way round town
straining at leads
checking pheromone laced emails

rolling over reeking
rigor mortised possums,
advertising

dropping logs
instead of blogs

dispensing regular pee updates
what’s happening
twitter feed for furry friends

wagging their happiness
howling their displeasure
nose to bum
ear to ear
disconnected but connected
neighbourhood pack.

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ps. Psychology Today (phfff!)

pps. I am a dog owning psychologist – so there 😉

ppps. Anthropomorphising in literature is not inconsistent with cognitive theories of dog behaviour.

pppps. If human’s are so smart, why is the planet in such a mess and why do we have reality TV shows?

ppppps. That Lee could be onto something but this is lot’s of fun.