why do dogs roll in such horrible things.....?

Just been on a walk on the riverbank with Flower, she was runnong along beside me, when all of a sudden she ran down the bank and dived into a suspicious looking object...! So I ran down too see what an earth she was doing, to find her rolling on a dead fish carcus (and a large one at that!)

My goodness she really needed a bath when we got back!! I know alot of dogs like to roll in horse poo....but Flower likes to roll on dead animals???


Do your furry friends do lovely things like this on walks???

Its the same with my guys, anything dirty and smelly and they are there, usually bird poo and dead dried up frogs My parents old retriever used to love going to the beach as she would find the dirtiest smelliest things to roll on, dead fish, dead whales, fishing bait etc....

Yep two of mine are the same, the smellier the better, the worst is corpses because they really do have the sweet sickly smell of decay!
Becky

hehe they are so bizarre!!! I have no problem walking past the poo....its the dead birdies that get rolled on....she looks so proud of herself afterwards too...!!!

I'm afraid 'rolling' is a natural thing for dogs to do I understand it disguise their scent making it more difficult for prey to detect them ...

It's doggie perfume!

My two rolled in decomposing hedgehog recently :smt078

On was even covered in hedgehog quills They got the tomato sauce treatment and then shampooed in the garden but I could smell dead hedgehog off them for days

Dusty is the worst, any kind of poo that is not dogs poo I think. She loves it. Hedgehog, fox, mice, rabbit chocolates, oh she eats them too!

One time in the field I saw Charlie giving it the full on body slam roll so called him back only to be greeted by the most foul stench I have ever smelt in my entire life!

He was covered in a thick green translucent sludge and I cannot even begin to describe the smell, but believe me, it was such a stench passers by were giving us looks all the way home!

I tied him to the washing post and from as far back as I could stand with an extended arm, squited the contents of one small tomato sauce bottle all over him and rubbed it in with a sweeping brush, still standing well back (honestly the smell would have knocked you sick if you stayed close for too long). I did the same with the dog shampoo and gave him 2 washes and hosepiped down and he still smelt for about a week even though he had no sign of this gloop on him that I could see!

I still to this day don't know what it was, I didn't go to investigate, he was promptly put on the lead and marched home!

Simple answer:

It's their job!

Max "finds" things on the beach to roll in - dead fish, dead birds, jellyfish....

He also likes really stagnant water, the kind that is almost solid