My dog Lally does a funny little dance after she goes to the bathroom. She scrapes her back feet against the grass: right, right, left, left. I call it “wipey feet” (as opposed to Happy Feet, I guess).
The topic came up in one of the dog lover sites I frequent, and nobody had a definitive answer. Why do some dogs wipe their feet after they piddle or poop? No expert in wipe-ology came forward to solve the mystery. All we could do was make some educated guesses.
- Some folks thought it might be similar to a cat burying messes in the litter box. Covering a fresh pile of poop with grass might make it hard for other dogs to find. This could allow the scent/territory marker to last longer.
- Some folks mentioned that dogs have sweat glands in their feet, and the foot scraping could be another way of scent-marking an area. (Because it’s so hard to miss the smell of that pile of poop, right?)
The answer I liked the best was this: the scratch marks left behind after a good old fashioned foot wiping can help alert animals in the area to the dog’s presence. They can serve as a warning sign to tell other animals to stay away.
In any case, the original post on the forum was a note to her dog, pointing out that “wiping” his feet in the mud doesn’t do much to clean them. In fact, it only makes matters messier! I can agree with that wholeheartedly; here in the Pacific Northwest, the mud is a constant companion. I was so happy for the few days we had of subfreezing temperatures — the mud froze and it was safe to walk on the grass again!
Frozen ground probably isn’t very comfortable for foot wiping, though. Lally does the wipey feet dance almost every time she goes to the bathroom; Moose will do it once in a while, but kind of halfheartedly. More of a Moosey Shuffle than a true Wipey Feet dance.