We(my parents) made the mistake of laying down newspaper in the basement, something about not having to walk the dog in Great Lakes winter.
But I remember dog poop turning white in the sun.
You caught me before my caffeine really kicked in, so random thoughts.
Maybe it’s unabsorbed fiber or something? From the rice filler?
@Bobo would be the resident mutant on this type of question.
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Quick web search for “white dog poop 70s” seems to indicate very high calcium in diet back then, maybe bone meal from abattoirs? I have no idea what prompted that white dog turd memory.
I’ve heard it mentioned before a few times. I think Louis C.K. talks about white dog poop as part of a bit in one of his specials. Sarah Silverman wrote a whole song titled “Whatever Happened to White Dog Poop From the 70s”. But I’ve never seen dog poop just turn white from drying out.
I’d suppose indigestibly large concentrations of calcium in the diet could play into it, but I’m by no means a GNT or anything. Just a mutant with a personal ontology that’s an ocean wide but an inch deep in most places. It’s what I get for reading Wikipedia as recreation.
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I think that is what brought back that memory.
If it’s not the calcium thing @dobby mentioned, my guess would be that people were a lot more lax about picking up after their dogs back then, so the poops would dry out in the sun far longer than they’d be allowed to these days. NYC didn’t even have any pick-up-your-dog’s-shit ordinance until the late 70s.
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Dogs evolved as social animals, so they have a survival stake in liking and being likeable. Cats evolved as solitary animals, so they just don’t give a shit what you think. (This is why dogs look guilty when they know they’ve done something wrong, and cats never do.) It has nothing to do with inherent intelligence.
Although cats are clearly smarter than dogs.
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I think my kids are trying to secretly adopt a kitten right now. There appear to be some pretty strong evolutionary behavioural adaptations toward bonding with humans even if they do not have that often needy beta dog socialization.
I love how the discussion has evolved into the “what colour dog turd was in my days”.
By the way, back in the mid 80’s I remember a lot of slacked lime coloured turds, but none in the 90’s.
Maybe public sanitation workers dropped lime on turds instead of picking them up…
My cats don’t do fist bump in the traditional way because they kinda use their faces as fists (like for punching doors open). They can learn other slick moves though;
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You sure know your shit!
I just know the difference between temperate-latitude pack animals who have relatively varied diets, and singleton desert animals that are extreme obligate carnivores.
I had a cat once that I could throw one of those little foam balls to, she’d catch it in midair and then carry it back to me in her mouth and drop it by my feet.
Not exactly fetch… plus cats do it on their own terms. I’ve known several dogs that would continue to chase a ball until their heart gave out if you didn’t stop throwing it.
And here I thought my falcon was just dumb…
This is what I have to do to get my kids to move out of my way…
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I know it sounds harsh, but it doesn’t cause any harm, as long as you just keep moving and push/shove with your thighs, rather than more extreme measures. No kicking, or outright hitting. Just, ignore the dog’s there and keep moving, and it’ll get the idea that it’s gotta pay attention to you.
Really, a lot of human-dog interaction problems stem from the dog either paying too little attention to you, or not realizing that you are a force of nature in its universe.
I wouldn’t recommend dog training on humans. We communicate using the same psychology, while human-dog communication isn’t so much a language barrier as it is a psychology barrier.
I have the feeling that if we make first contact with another species as intelligent as we are, animal psychologists will do much better than human psychologists, linguists, or anthropologists to get through, simply because those fields come with the baggage of tons of assumptions, rather than just observation and biology.
Cats can be enormously affectionate with humans. It just comes from a different mental place than canine affection, because cats don’t feel the need to please others.
Here’s a seriously interesting piece on feline intelligence: http://messybeast.com/intelligence.htm
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I was going to say something similar. Cats are metal that way. \m/
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Well, this is weird, I was just thinking about this. I give my dog elk antlers to chew on, but the last one I gave him was extra soft, and he ate several inches of it in just a few minutes. Vet says it’s ok, it will digest, antlers are better than bones that way.
But, for the next day, his poop was mostly white dust. Seeing those, I remembered that dog poop seemed to always be white when I was a kid and had to pick it up from the yard.
“I remember white dog poop” seems to be the new shorthand for “I am old”.
That being said, I remember white dog poop. sigh
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