Why dogs rejoice and paw the ground after they “Go”

Don’t get me wrong now. I do love my dog - but it’s a genuine gold plated pain to leave a warm hearth to enjoy rain, sleet and snow just so the pooch can blow her ballast tanks…and of course, there’s still reliance on the male role model in our household so it is invariably me who is called upon to brave these nose runner nights. Perhaps you’ve had occasion to join me on such missions? It was on just such a snow ridden day when once again called upon to chaperone the canine on her daily rounds that I got fed up with how infernally long it took her to find just the right, precise - nay penultimate spot to deposit her steaming heap o’ treasure. During that interminable outing, the leash is most restraining to me as this idiot dog rejected perfectly good spot after wonderfully propitious zone such that I lost it and began to plead to the heavens “oh why in the world are this and all other hounds so confounded persistent in finding a perfect spot for their mother lodes”. Even worse, once the deed had finally been accomplished, there was such unalloyed rejoicing from her that invariably a mighty victory dance erupted of rapturous scratching and pawing like the bull that downed its Matador to immortalize the very spot of the victory forever more. Now since my frustration and pain usually happened at dusk in said evil weather, my railings and protests were heard only by me and that insensible dog - given that no person mentally competent would be out there on purpose…

The winter carried on with regularity and so do she…and inevitably, so did I carry on night by night. Sniff, Search, Refine, Bracket target – then Sublime Payload Delivery and jubilant paw dance – leading to my once again cursing that victory performance during the enforced vigil. Repeat for 100 days while shaking briskly.

And finally spring happened. I could venture outside with the lady and not freeze half to death but could actually see the ground free of ice, snow and muck – and there to my sight was a true wonder indeed. The dog it turns out was a capitalist and I had been blind. Instead of random dropping and dancing, the dog had been investing…laying down beautifully precise patterns of fertilizer bombs over the winter in a precisely drawn perimeter of limited size and scope such that every few feet was a tall clump of variegated, lush and verdant vegetation at least 20 times higher than the pale yellow green stuff that didn’t dare call itself grass in the presence of these majestic stands. It dawned on me then that what I had esteemed in the dark of winter as inconveniently random, useless and infernal sniffings and pawings were in fact the workings of an ancient program designed to produce the preconditions – “starter islands” if you will, to create the spark of habitations wonderfully hospitable to moisture, moisture to seeds, seeds to flowers, flowers and seeds to bugs and mice, bugs to birds and such small critters then to required to feed future canines who would breed more canines and other small predators a generation or two hence. It was indeed easy to see how from such beginnings the forest primeval must arise.

Ever since that realization I join in my dog’s great and glorious rejoicing within its defecatory domain where the invisible paw of Canine Capitalism paves the way for the next generation. But mostly when it’s dark…