The Dish by Darcy

[This update is only a change of the name of the post from "Poop smells like...?" to "Dog poop should smell like...." So many readers are asking the question and they can't find the post. I'm just making it easier for them. Thanks, Darcie]

Dear Darcie, So what should my dog’s excrement smell and look like? I never thought of checking that before to see how’s she’s feeling. Thanks, Alex.

Dear Alex,

I know! Doesn’t it seem strange that we don’t know the very basics about our bodies and our dog’s bodies? The first thing your doctor tells you when you go into the office is, “Pee in this cup”. They know that our pee will tell them volumes! Nobody ever told us about sniffing ourselves so we’d know, too. Common sense, though, isn’t it. Well, here you go. A sniffing lesson.

Here’s a tip for your and for your dog’s health. I’ll try to use a little potty humor to make it more palatable for those who don’t even like to think about doing something like this. I have a thirteen year old grandson, raised boys, and have a few guys in my life. I know a thing or two about potty humor.

When you’re feeling good, sniff your own pee. Know what your poop looks and smells like. Write it down if you have a bad memory. When you feel bad, do the same thing. There is a big difference in the urine and the feces between sick and well and in the changing from one to another. You can smell it in a fart, too. Or someone else’s. “Man, I don’t know what crawled up there, but it’s dead.” You’ll know when you’re catching cold or flu so you can get ready for it, you may recognize when something more serious has started, too. You’ll learn to know right away when your body is changing from healthy to sick if you pay attention.

Men can often tell when something isn’t right by the smell or look of their pee or how it feels coming out. Know before the problem raises it’s head, so to speak.

Women often need to be a little more vigilant than men and of course, check a little deeper than just pee and poo. If they know their body, they’ll catch infections faster and get treatment if necessary before the problem changes the mood. Yes, ladies, we know that our plumbing isn’t the same as the mens, don’t we? We tend to have more to cope with “down there”. It’s no fault of ours. God made us this way. I’ve taken it up with Him a few times in my life. The last was about fifteen years ago, it was a long, hot, Harley ride. Enough said, I’m sure. BG

Do it for your dogs, too.

Digestive upsets, depression, headache, spinal misalignment, pregnancy, infection, stress…they all show up as odor and shape in our excreted materials and in our breath.

Get a leg up on your dog’s health. Know before the dog starts showing you signs that something isn’t just right.

Sniff the poop once a week. You were picking it up anyway. Pick up with a clear baggie, break it apart. Look for worms or that quarter or string that your dog ate about 24 hours ago. Take a sniff. Poop should have very little odor when it’s healthy. When your dog is sick, it’s going to have a rotten odor or smell like a bad chemical. There are more smells than I can write in a simple post but you’ll figure it out. Bad is bad.

Pee should be clear or very light colored yellow. Clear is better. Good healthy pee smells a lot like water that’s a little off. It smells “nice”. You’ll see what I mean when you smell healthy pee. Bad pee smells like ammonia, chemicals, again, there are lots of odors for bad. Pee is easy to catch in a cup if you’re a good catcher. Your dog might look at you funny but they’ll get used to it.

Does your dog’s body smell good? Sniff right at the top of your dog’s shoulders. Does it smell like she’s just had a bath but she didn’t? Or stinky? “PU, get away from me, Dog.” A healthy dog’s body should smell nice and clean. It’s amazing to me that most people don’t know that. “But he’s a dog. Dogs smell, well, ‘doggy’, don’t they?” Huh uh. Dogs who are healthy and eat a good diet, smell wonderful. Our dogs don’t get bathed unless they roll in something nasty. They always smell good unless there’s a health issue. Knowing a smell change can help you catch disease, infection, and worry much faster, before it becomes a real issue.

Breath. Bad breath of any kind other than smelling like fish or garlic or anything like that because they just ate some, is a bad sign. Check teeth and gums. Bad breath can be dirty teeth, stress, depression, gum disease, broken teeth, or even something bad going on in your dog’s digestive system or somewhere else in the body. Check your dog’s teeth weekly. Look for breaks, loose teeth, decay, chips. Press the gums, are they pink, are they black, are they too soft, are they firm and a good color? You’ll know when they change if you get in there every week.

You can clean your dog’s teeth yourself. Get some dental tools from your dentist so you can take the tartar off. Sit down and make a nice afternoon out of it. A little at a time, no need to keep their mouth wide open for five minutes at a time, open, clean for a minute, close. Get way back into those back teeth. Praise and love. Be careful not to scrape the tooth, just take the tarter off, it’s kind of like taking the coating off of an M&M candy. Be really careful. It’s easy, once you do it you’ll know. When we first got Bruno, he was three years old and had never had his teeth cared for. On the third day he was with us, he laid down in my lap, opened his mouth, and let me clean his teeth. Then we brushed gently. Man, there was a lot of tartar on his teeth and I swear that when he got up, he was running his tongue over his teeth like he didn’t even know he had teeth before. You can do it with your dog, too. If your dog won’t let you into the mouth for a good cleaning and you’re not interested in training that, do see your vet for a cleaning. Puppies should always be trained from day one to open and let you inspect. Rescue dogs come with baggage and sometimes that’s a different story. Dental care is so important, get it done whatever way you have to. A good diet is the best defense against tooth and gum disease.

What you feed your dog has a lot to do with what you smell and see. If you’re feeding one of what I like to call the bad dog foods with corn and other processed grains including processed, added vitamins and little to no nutrition for your dog, the poop will be a big yucky soft mass of stink, kind of what you’d see a cow leave behind. Gosh, really, corn fed cows, corn fed dogs. Same thing? If you’ve never seen a cow make a pie…if they go on a rock or a hard floor…it splashes. And it sti…inks!

Dogs who eat a good diet will have harder, smaller poop and it doesn’t smell bad at all. If there’s sufficient bone in it, it will turn white in the sun and disappear after a hard rain. (Don’t wait for rain, please pick up and dispose immediately after your dog every time he goes. That’s another health issue altogether.) When you break poop from a raw fed dog, it turns to powder in your baggie. That’s so cool to see. It means that your dog got the nutrition from the food, all that’s left is the debris. It should be a little bit hard for them to pass a turd, it helps to express their anal glands. So you don’t have to!

If eating the bad foods, pee might be darker yellow to orange and stink like a boy’s urinal. It will burn your yard. Dark yellow to orange can also mean your dog isn’t drinking enough water, another tell tale sign of possible trouble.

Not all disease and illness come directly related to foods, it can be genetics, hereditary issues. But more and more I think we’re finding that it does have so much to do with food.

It just doesn’t make sense that we won’t feed our dogs the way Nature intended for them to eat. We want them to be healthy and happy and live a long time. Not sick and depressed while eating something resembling food that somebody cooked up and put into a bag.

Like I always say, “Nature intended for dogs to eat raw food or they’ve have pockets for their matches.” And yes, opposable thumbs, too. That said, if you don’t want to go the raw route, please feed the best food that you can.

It’s your decision. Spend your money to pad the pockets of the bad dog food guys and keep paying your vet to try to figure out what’s wrong with your dog. Or feed your dogs to health and save your wallet.

Smell your dog. It’s the first line of defense in health.

(Of course, this is all just my opinion and experience. For what it’s worth, I like clean, healthy pee and poop and I don’t care who catches me sniffing up after my dogs. Thanks for listening.)