Humans best friends!

My family loves dogs and, being surrounded by dogs my whole life, I have experienced great times and tragic times with our pets. Sadly, we recently had a string of sorrow because we had to put Abby, Millie and Minnie to sleep. They were great, old dogs that lived wonderful lives and certainly touched ours. And, probably like your dogs, they had interesting habits and peculiar behaviors worthy of scientific inquiry.

Abby was my dog, Millie was my parents’ dog and Minnie was my father-in-law’s. Abby was a loveable black Lab, and true to form, she ate everything she could find. Under normal circumstances, this would not be a problem, but Abby also had a sensitive stomach. After she ate something she was not supposed to, she would go outside and start eating grass, which was nice because I did not have to mow. One time she ate a lot of grass, came inside and upchucked what my wife Cory and I call the “grass log.”

There is a lot of discussion as to why dogs eat grass. Some speculate dogs like the taste of grass or maybe want to add some roughage to their diet. Others say dogs eat grass to make themselves vomit, which was likely the case with Abby.

When swallowed, the grass tickles the throat and stomach, which may trigger the dog’s “emesis” response to clear its stomach. Upon observation, I would usually discover that the grass was never chewed, rather it was gulped down, which is what some veterinarians believe is an indication that the dog tried to relieve an upset stomach. Whatever the reason, there were definite times when Abby would eat grass — like after gobbling down a few dozen old crab apples off the ground.

Millie was a fantastic dog. She could do a cool, little dance that would make her short of breath. It was kind of a Catch-22 because we would enjoy her amazing moves but then we would have to suffer her very bad breath. This made us think about so many people judge a dog’s mouth as being cleaner than their own, or loaded with some special germ-killing antiseptic?

Author and vet Marty Becker offers his perspective. He believes people think dogs have cleaner mouths because when a dog is injured they spend a lot of time licking their wounds. This action seems to heal the wounds very quickly. Yet, dogs do not have super healing saliva, rather, they are actually removing dead tissue in much the same way a surgeon does for us.

Of the three, Minnie was the oldest at 17. One of my favorite memories of Minnie is having my wife Cory pulling up in her car with Minnie barking her head off. This always perplexed me because Minnie seldom barked —  except when she was in the car. What was it about the car that caused her to bark?

There are many reasons why dogs bark, but among the primary reasons is they are trying to communicate with you or another dog. Barking is also how dogs express emotion. In Minnie’s case, we concluded, she was just excited about being in the car.

One additional way to enjoy your dog is to use science to explore some of his or her peculiar habits and build on the wonderful memories these faithful friends can offer. Thanks for these and all the great memories Abby, Millie and Minnie. We miss you dearly!