Mom watches the family dog kick the grass after pooping and asks Daniel why he thinks she does it.

He is confident. She is covering it up. Like cats do.

He is wrong -- in the best possible way.

Dogs kick after pooping not to hide the evidence but to spread it. When a dog scratches the ground after defecating, glands in her paws release chemical signals. So instead of one scent in one location, the dog is now broadcasting two signals over a wider area. The poop says she was here. The paw scent spreads that message further. The scratch marks in the ground are a visual signal too -- other dogs can see that something happened here.

It is not cleanup. It is amplification.

This behavior goes all the way back to wolves. For wild wolves, territory is extremely important -- it determines where a pack can hunt, sleep, and rais ...