My husband Ryan and I were walking our youngish pup, Phil, behind our condo. It was a typical spring day, with a light breeze and snow still caked around the woods.
Our little pup, Phil, was rather a scaredy-cat dog; with the slightest breeze, he’d twitch; and he’d run to me to pick him up if another dog came nearby. So he developed some very odd bathroom habits. Pooping is actually the most-vulnerable time for a dog. You will note how they curl up into position and look around to ensure that no predators attack them.
We were walking up a hill and Phil was making his way off the path for his “poop position.” He nestled his paws around in the snow and rotated … the wrong way.
His furry long tail was facing uphill as he squatted. Because of the angle, he was practically sitting where he had targeted his poop position … and we had to stop laughing, to rescue this pup from his “poop debacle.”
Yep, he pooped … all over his furry tail and bottom.
The first day we brought Charlie home was super exciting. He was an overweight puppy who had some worm issues and made the weirdest noises, every time he moved, as if moving annoyed him.
We had a small crate but he couldn’t quite sit in it, so we put him in the large dog crate we had, instead. He was pretty good (for a 10-week-old puppy) on his bathroom breaks. If he was in his crate, he would whine and immediately go outside to pee. We were so happy because Phil, our first dog, was the worst dog for crying after he peed himself.
On our first night, I woke up at 3 a.m. and heard crying. Not surprising. So I went to his aid and opened the crate to find that he had, in fact, pooped himself and then rolled around in it. Yes, this beautiful white, pudgy puppy was now brown at three in the morning.
Like all puppy parents (and I’m sure all human parents), poop becomes a normal conversation topic and item to deal with. So I yelled for Ryan to get up. His job was to clean the crate while I took Charlie outside. We needed to ensure “it” was all out of him. He clearly didn’t think pooping himself required whining to go outside, and he peed like he normally would.
Once I brought him back inside and his crate was clean, we had to clean this pudgy puppy back to white. We Googled what to do. Everything we found said that the crate was too big, so we put him in the small crate for the rest of the night. It worked. The next night we put him in the big crate and he didn’t poop himself. Success!
One of the joys of having a dog is that you often find odd things in their poop—earbuds, parts of toys, long human hair that strings their poop bundles together—and, because of these things, sometimes pooping doesn’t quite go according to plan.
I was doing a quick pee-poop walk, right outside our condo door, with Phil. It was winter and because he is part husky, he had a double coat, which made him extra furry.
Whilst outside waiting to pick up Phil’s poop, he started to struggle. You could tell by the “tail pump.” His tail pumped up and down like he was trying to jack a car up off the ground. He then started scurrying around, still in the poop position. I went to grab him and saw that he had poop half hanging out but still connected to him with what looked like hair. I screamed for Ryan because, at this point of being a pup parent, I had no idea what to do. I tried to pull the poop out of him but felt tension, which made me hesitate. Ryan came barrelling outside and then Googled what to do. He yelled, “Don’t pull it! It can damage if it’s connected to something. It says to cut it …” He ran back inside. Meanwhile, I was holding Phil by the belly, tail up, and telling him it’s all OK.
Ryan came back with scissors and didn’t want anything to do with the situation. But, unfortunately, it required two people. I said he could hold Phil or cut the poop (he opted to hold Phil). I grabbed the poop and cut, as Ryan gagged. Phil ran free and started scooting his butt on the snow, to clean himself. And the poop went in the garbage.
