Meditating on Dog Poop

Whenever the world is too much with me and I start brooding, or I'm searching for a topic to write about or the next chore to do, I head outside and do a walking meditation. Which means I grab two doubled up recycled plastic supermarket shopping bags and a garden trowel and set off on a mindful quest for dog poop. Which can take a while because we have eighteen acres.

I should warn you that I'm not politically correct when it comes to collecting poop. I do what a lot of folks do: pick it up and dispose of it in the regular garbage-in my case that involves a trip to the county transfer station, where trash and recyclables are collected in Dumpsters, then trucked away to their various fates.

How Many Poop-Producing Pooches Call People Their Pals, Anyway?

National Pet Owners Survey 2009-2010 indicates that 45.6 million households have one or more dogs. The grand total number of U.S. pets is 77.5 million dogs.

The Dog Poop Dope

• Dog waste is, not surprisingly, dirty. It's capable of spreading bacteria and viruses, e.g., tapeworm, roundworm, E. Coli and Parvovirus.

• Canine feces are a major contributor to storm water pollution (as in Katrina), and can end up in the municipal water supply and bodies of water after it dissolves. If put in compost bins (a no-no), it can spread pathogens.

• Aesthetically speaking, dog poop looks lousy on your lawn and can damage it.

• Dog poop is not appropriate as a fertilizer.

• One single pile can take over a year to fully break down.

• Dog poop can attract mice and parasites.

• Will Brinton, a scientist and authority on garbage (somebody's gotta do it), says 10 million tons of waste a year are produced by dogs and cats.

How to Disappear Poop

• In progressive San Francisco, there's an ongoing experiment to recycle all pet poop into methane for heat, cooking meals, generating electricity by 2020 using methane digesters.

• In many areas you can hire pet poop pickup people, although it will likely end up in the same place (the local landfill). The advantage is that a pickup service is convenient. No fuss, no muss.

• You can buy a dog poop recycling device for your yard that works like a mini septic tank. It uses natural bacteria and enzyme cultures to reduce the poop to a liquid capable of being absorbed by the ground.

Coyote Scat versus Dog Poop

Living in an area heavily colonized by coyotes, I see their distinctive scat every day. You can't mistake it for dog poop because it's reddish, has lots of fibrous material and usually remnants of seeds.

Cat versus Dog Poop

Cats are fastidious and discrete. As we all know, they bury their poop, which is a blessing because it really stinks. Dogs, in contrast, view the world as their personal toilet bowl and will drop a load virtually anywhere, but try not to defecate too close to their sleeping and eating areas. That's one reason it's very cruel to keep a dog chained or confined in an enclosed space and force him to defecate where he hangs out.

Poop Rainbow

The color of a dog's poop can tell you a lot about his health. For example, yellow or greenish indicates rapid transit through the gut. Black and tarry means bleeding in the upper intestine. Blood in the stool indicates colonic bleeding. Pasty, light-colored poop means lack of bile and possible liver disease. If it's large, gray, and stinky, your dog has bad digestion or malabsorption. If it's dry and white, you probably live in the high desert like I do and it's been catching the rays for a while.

All Poop is Goopy, Right?

More or less. Actually, pathological poop can be watery, foamy, greasy, or mucousy, indicating bowel wall irritation; bacterial infection; malabsorption; or colon issues.

My Dog Shu's Butt-Sticking Poop, aka Pseudoconstipation

Long-haired dogs like chows suffer from a condition called false constipation. It's a form of voluntary retention that can lead to anal inflammation. It's pretty gross, because the feces sticks to the hair around the anus, which creates a poop plug and a really rank smell that will just get bigger and bigger until it's removed. The easy cure is to cut the hair very short around the anus and clip away the matted stool (preferably wearing rubber or surgical gloves and holding your breath).

Indoor PoopScoop

I don't know about your dogs, but if for some reason mine can't get outside (like it's the middle of the night and we're dead to the world) and they just gotta go, they favor a popular throw rug in our office or sometimes even one of the cat litter boxes. And I get to suck it up, as it were.

Puppy's Poopiphilia

When she was young, my pit mix Puppy used to adore fishing for cat poop in the litter box and eating it. Fortunately, with maturity (relatively speaking) came a change of heart about that charming habit.

Ravens and Their Poop Pops

Just for fun and as a treat ravens will pick poop up, fly away w/it, scarf it like it's candy, then drop whatever's left to the ground. You can tell when a raven's been playing with it because it looks broken up with pieces missing.

Why Ponder Poop?

Scooping dog poop puts my world in perspective. All of us animals, from the bottom to the top of the food chain, are basically one long digestive tube in motion, filling up and emptying out constantly. Rather humbling when you think about it.