Are dogs actually dirty or messy by nature?

By Kodichukwu Okonkwo, DVM | June 6th, 2018




I was about 8 years old when I was watching a local stray dog who went to a sandy place, defecated and started to use his back legs to kick sand unto the poop. He kept kicking until the poop was totally covered. He went back to the spot to double check and see that the poop was covered. This behavior might be very common with cats with their litter but before I experienced this with cats I had seen dogs doing it. As young as I was I concluded that dogs are very clean animals for that singular act.


As a veterinarian, I have some clients complaining seriously about their dogs and mostly puppies messing up their homes and how they are tempted to ‘throw’ the dog or puppy outside the house to stop the mess. I have tried to convince many dog owners on how to accommodate their young dogs who might be messy at their puppy stage until they outgrow the behavior. Some will try to bear it until their dogs outgrow the behavior and some will not be able to wait until then.

If you observe a nursing dog with her puppies you will see her licking off any poop from the puppies and cleaning them with her tongue constantly to make sure they are dry and clean. Grown dogs understand cleanliness as you can see from this act.

People still complain that their adult dogs mess up their homes. I have tried to investigate some by going to the house to see for myself before attempting to advice the client. I have always seen that the fault was with the way the dog was brought up. Most of the guard dogs are locked up from 6am until 10pm without any attempt to release the dog to urinate or defecate at intervals and due to the fact that the dog understands that he will not be released he will just do it in the cage or in the house against his will.

One rule I learned about dogs is that they will not defecate or urinate where they sleep. Note: “…where they sleep…” If the dog sleeps indoors he will most likely want to do his thing outside the house but if he was not shown how to find his way outside the house to do his thing he will find somewhere inside the house to do it. You will notice that the dog always want to keep the poop or urine out of sight. That is because he desperately want the mess to remain hidden.

Puppies might be very messy because they are just learning to become a fully formed dog. Just like children who poop in their underwear, puppies will poop anywhere just to ease themselves until they start to become socially conscious. At this stage, training inform of showing the dog where to do his thing becomes important.

If you watch dogs constantly you will notice that they sniff a lot. They search their environment with their nose which is a key attribute to note about training puppies to poop at a particular spot. If they constantly smell poop at a spot, they will most likely do their stuff there so there is a need to wash off the smell from everywhere else and retain the smell at the right spot. If the smell is everywhere then they will do it everywhere and if the smell is nowhere they will still do it everywhere.

Watch dogs again, they love to hide their urine and most likely urinate at grass filled places or carpets indoors that can soak the urine. Using this concept you can remove such carpets indoors where the dog has access to and when you take the dog outside you take advantage of grass areas for the puppy to do his thing.

How about dogs that love to raise their back leg in other to spray their urine at some objects in other to leave a scent. This behavior is mainly exhibited by male dogs of mating age trying to attract a mate. If you own a male dog that does this, you will notice that the dog does it mostly when he comes out of his “sleeping place” or when being walked. My dog does this to the back tires of my car whenever I come back from work.  He does it every time (GOSH). Female dogs (bitches) also do mark places with their urine. My female pug did it very often also but she never does that indoors which was where she slept.

I don’t know your own experience about dogs but having studied dogs through observation I have come to understand that dogs or puppies mess a place up not because they are dirty or love to mess the place up but because they were poorly trained. I don’t mean taking the dog to a school or a ‘seminar’ when I say “trained”. By training I mean showing the dog where you wish the dog to do his thing by exploiting their natural behavior which I pointed out within this write up which includes: Sniffing, tendency to hide their urine & poop and Tendency not to poop where they sleep.

1 Comments
  1. Chun Whitman March 10th, 2023

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Kodichukwu Okonkwo, DVM

Founder of Fairvet Animal Clinic Ltd since 2011, studied at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. He is well experienced in small animal, large animal & poultry medicine, and also skilled at zoo medicine. He loves animals and builds both professional and personal relationship with pet owners in order to sustain a good interaction with pet and animal owners, coupled with His great skills in programming; he brought about www.fairvet.com which he personally built from scratch.



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