Food scavenging

Dogs are true scavengers by nature; they wander over vast areas in the wild and any carrion is an excellent alternative to hunting for food and is easier to deal with. Wild Dogs have been so widely spread throughout the world because of their success as predators and their virtual omnivorous eating habits. To a wild dog and in the akin mind of many pet dogs, discarded food around the home or animal droppings in the park can mean the difference between life and death.

Dogs have fewer taste buds in their mouth compared to us and rotten food does not taste as bad as we perceive; moreover they don’t have to deal with the problem that it might be toxic or dangerous. Dogs are not bothered by human perceptions or imagination. That’s dogs!

However, allowing dogs to vacuum up waste food in the park is as unpleasant as it is dangerous since they can get severe food poisoning. Many dogs have a natural desire to gobble up cow, horse and sheep dung or, in fact, the dung of any herbivorous animal. Some go one step further and roll in the stuff just for good measure and to help mask their own smell. Herbivorous dung has many nutrients partly digested which dogs can utilise, so waste not want not is the dog's motto.

Dogs of course don't actually steal food, well, not in the human sense anyway. Stealing, as many of you know, is not in the dogs vocabulary. They merely eat what they find as their wild cousins do. The fact that we disapprove is totally irrelevant to a dog, and probably quite incomprehensible. If I were a dog and learning by association I would probably learn that every time I got a tasty, rotten bit of burger my owner would freak out and try to get it for himself? Otherwise why would he chase me, grab me, and then have the cheek to try and prise it out of my mouth if he didn’t want it for himself. Of course I would make a run for it and as I have two extra legs, the resulting victory is a forgone conclusion.