Why Dogs Kick Dirt In The Air After Pooping

It’s not just because they get a kick out of it

Image by the author. Based on a photo by Srecko Skrobic on Unsplash.

I have a dog and he does this weird thing. He takes a dump and then scrapes the ground with his hind legs, throwing dirt in my face. If I was a farmer, I might appreciate this behavior. I could plant some of the smaller root vegetables in the furrowed ground and would even have a steaming pile of manure right at hand.

But since I don’t grow potatoes, I don’t appreciate the dirt in my mouth. It’s a nuisance and I don’t see any purpose behind it. And yet, there must be one. He can’t be flinging clods of dirt into the air and leaving behind huge scratch marks just for the heck of it.

So why? Why is my dog scratching the ground?

Well, it turns out it has to do with his smelly feet.

Dogs have smelly feet

The scientists who study animal behavior are called ethologists and besides sitting in a mosquito-infested jungle observing the grooming and copulation habits of chimpanzees à la Jane Goodall, ethologists also study dogs.

Since dogs are even worse at filling out questionnaires than chimpanzees, these studies are observational. In practice, this means that to uncover the mystery of ground scratching, an ethologist had to follow dogs…