You have probably experienced this hundreds of times – you are taking your dog for a walk, you meet your neighbor taking his dog for a walk and they start smelling each other’s butts like there’s no tomorrow. But don’t be embarrassed, this behavior is perfectly normal and all dogs are doing it. Even the cool ones.
Meet and greet
Humans can’t completely understand all the information a dog gets from smelling another dog’s butt. At least 33% of a dog’s brain is designed to process smells, as opposed to about 5% of a human’s brain.
So, since dogs can’t shake hands, they sniff butts to greet each other. Dogs have anal glands just inside their rectums, they produce a strong odor and dogs can find out all sorts of information this way: the sex of the other dog, whether the dog is in heat, what the dog ate lately and whether the encounter is likely to be a friendly one or there will be fight.
I’ve already met you, but let’s do it again!
When a dog already knows about the other dog from a prior sniffing, and he still smells the other dog every time they meet, he is simply asking What’s up? What’s new?
According to Kevin Behan, a dog trainer and author, this is a dog calming mechanism and anytime something new happens, especially something stressful which causes anxiety in them, dogs tend to sniff each other’s behinds.
It simply calms them down.
Not all dogs are like this
Some dogs aren’t as enthusiastic about this invasion of privacy as others, so they might not take kindly to all that sniffing and focused attention.
Therefore, whenever your dog is making a new acquaintance, be careful and attentive. If one of them doesn’t like this little game, separate them immediately, for it might get nasty.