Urine Good Company

Well this is just great. Now I can't get dog pee out of my mind.

Anyway, it's no big news that dogs like to use their good scents in marking various locations with their urine and/or feces, sniff at the the locations marked by other dogs, greet new colleagues with a sniff of their anogenital regions (AGR), roll in wet odiferous matter and wear the fragrance into the house, etc. But humans just don't really know all the information that could be getting exchanged between dogs through scents (are they sniffing about us??), or how dogs actually choose the time and place for a pee or a sniff (smell art?).

Right now there's an interesting discussion happening on Trisha McConnell's blog concerning some new research on scent marking. It seems that one of the reasons they mark where they do could be because it can give other dogs a place to sniff them without intruding into their personal space to sniff their AGRs, particularly when they are entering a new area where other dogs are already gathered (thus avoiding being mobbed by multiple noses at once).

....or maybe it's just their way of sniff blogging.
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