For those of you with female dogs, or any dogs that squat to pee, how often do dog-illiterate strangers march up to you demanding to pick up feces that you didn’t leave behind because they mistake your dog’s pee squat for a poop? It’s happened way too often to me. Once, I tried to explain to a particularly irate homeowner that I know my dog didn’t leave any turds, but (*waving bags*) rest assured that I would pick them up if it had been the case that my dog left more than a harmless pee.
“Well, how do you know she was just peeing? Did you check?” he demanded, maybe because I didn’t turn back to bend down and stick my nose into the patch of grass that Bowpi had just whizzed on.
Yes, I really can tell the difference by just looking. It’s really not hard. Allow me to illustrate with a brief side-by-side comparison:
This is a female dog squatting to pee. Note the flat angle of her back and the splay of her legs.
This is a male dog pooping. A female dog will also squat with the same rounded back and scrunched posture.
So trust us, buddy. When we watch our dogs poop and pee multiple times a day, every day, we can tell the difference between a poop and a pee squat even without going back for a close visual or olfactory inspection.
Now please resume your regularly scheduled pruning and lawnwork and stop glowering at my dogs.