Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to the short Stuff, Josh Chuck, Jerry Dave.
Speaker 2: Let's get all right, this is our episode on dog poop.
Speaker 1: That's right, you can't say poop.
Speaker 2: Dog poop, white dog poop.
Speaker 1: Specifically white dog poop, the same white dog poop that
Speaker 1: Sarah Silverman saying about, same white dog poop that shows
Speaker 1: up in Stepbrothers, which is probably the only reason why
Speaker 1: people who were born after the late eighties are aware
Speaker 1: that white dog poop pep even ever existed.
Speaker 2: I don't know the Sarah Silverman bit. And I've seen
Speaker 2: Stepbrothers a bunch, and I don't remember the white dog
Speaker 2: poop in that one.
Speaker 1: Those neighborhood bullies, the kids they make Will Ferrell touch
Speaker 1: his tongue to the white dog.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And you know what, until
Speaker 2: you said this, I didn't notice that. I don't notice
Speaker 2: white dog poop.
Speaker 1: Oh really, I definitely did. It was a mainstay while
Speaker 1: we were growing up, Like it was a thing when
Speaker 1: you were walking down the sidewalk in your neighborhood and
Speaker 1: you just look to your left in somebody's yard, there
Speaker 1: were piles of white dog poop, and you do not
Speaker 1: see that these days.
Speaker 2: I never thought about it until you sent this, And
Speaker 2: there is a reason why. And I thought the reason
Speaker 2: was going to be as simple as people pick up
Speaker 2: their dog poop more than they did in the eighties.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's calcium, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the diet of dogs changed dramatically in the late
Speaker 1: eighties early nineties, and the thing that was giving these
Speaker 1: dogs white dog poop, or making dogs poop white, was
Speaker 1: an overabundance of calcium that was in standard dog food
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dog food was pretty bad back then. There's still
Speaker 2: tons of bad dog food and pet food in general,
Speaker 2: but there's lots of really good stuff now. Back then
Speaker 2: it was very much loaded with bone meal and some meat.
Speaker 2: But basically it's that bone meal, lots of calcium and bones.
Speaker 2: And you know, calcium is good to dogs. You know,
Speaker 2: a little bit of calcium is fine, but if you
Speaker 2: have too much of it, you can't absorb it. It
Speaker 2: comes out in your poop and it doesn't come out white,
Speaker 2: but it dries up in the sun, and once the
Speaker 2: water is removed, it turned that chalky white.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think ifl science compared it to when humans
Speaker 1: take like vitamins and we don't absorb all of it, it
Speaker 1: just comes out in our pea. Same thing with calcium
Speaker 1: and dog's diets, like after they have as much as
Speaker 1: they need, they just pass it in their poop. And
Speaker 1: then also one of the other problems with that dog
Speaker 1: food in the sixties, seventies and eighties is that the
Speaker 1: way that the bones were rendered made it even harder
Speaker 1: to absorb, so a lot of that calcium. They might
Speaker 1: not have even been getting enough calcium from the food,
Speaker 1: they just weren't absorbing it. They were passing it. So
Speaker 1: if the poop wasn't coming out white, which I can attest.
Speaker 1: I had a dog in the eighties.
Speaker 2: What was your dog's name?
Speaker 1: Well, there were a few, but jingle Bells j was
Speaker 1: a great one. God JB was such a good dog.
Speaker 1: We brought her home and put her in the fence
Speaker 1: for the first time. I went to the shelter and
Speaker 1: brought her home and she just looked at us and
Speaker 1: jumped right over the fence, and we're like, oh, this
Speaker 1: one's gonna be trouble. She was, but she was a
Speaker 1: great dog. And then the other one was ll llban.
Speaker 1: Those are the two dogs I had in the eighties.
Speaker 2: That's great, that's a very eighties dog name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was so sweet. I'll just tell you one anecdote,
Speaker 1: real quick. Ell was a I guess kind of a
Speaker 1: Shepherd mix Doberman Shepherd mix, kind of super sweet, super
Speaker 1: sad eyes, just the sweetest dog. She just looked like
Speaker 1: she'd seen too much in life, even though I know
Speaker 1: for a fact she hadn't. She's had kind of the
Speaker 1: old soul thing going on. And she was roommates with
Speaker 1: a dog named Hershey, little Schnauzer, and Hershey would fall
Speaker 1: into the pool every once in a while, and Ell,
Speaker 1: who was a great swimmer, would go in and swim
Speaker 1: over to her and push her nut sure towards the
Speaker 1: steps so they could both get out. I saw it
Speaker 1: more than once. That's how good a dog.
Speaker 2: Al L was well very quickly. Then I, as a
Speaker 2: child had the big two were Huggy Bear and Bo.
Speaker 2: Huggy Bear was a German Shepherd that had floppy ears,
Speaker 2: and Bo was a Basset hound who would step on
Speaker 2: its ears they were so long. And we know I've
Speaker 2: talked about it before, but we kept our dogs outside.
Speaker 2: My parents did that. We had a big, probably quarter
Speaker 2: acre dog fenceton dog pen with a very large doghouse
Speaker 2: built on it. And when Huggy Bear died, Bo died
Speaker 2: not long after because of a broken heart, we think.
Speaker 2: And one day my parents came home and found me
Speaker 2: laying in their doghouse.
Speaker 1: Crying that sweet hew old were you, I.
Speaker 2: Don't remember, probably like nine or ten.
Speaker 1: Man, that is sweet Chuck would be a guest.
Speaker 2: But anyway, you were talking before we digressed about your
Speaker 2: dogs in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so we both had dogs in the eighties,
Speaker 1: and we could attest that their poop didn't come out white.
Speaker 1: It magically became white as time war on.
Speaker 2: That's right, And we could stop here with some heartwarming
Speaker 2: stories and the answer that question. But because we do
Speaker 2: what we do, we're gonna talk more about dog food
Speaker 2: and dog poop right after this, all right, we promised
Speaker 2: to talk more about dog food. It used to be
Speaker 2: not as good, like we said, full of bone meal
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. But after World War Two there
Speaker 2: was a better economy and many more dogs became household
Speaker 2: pets and over time, and of course it's really exploded
Speaker 2: in the past like fifteen to twenty years, but even
Speaker 2: back then, people realize, manufacturers realized that there was a
Speaker 2: lot of money to be made in the pet industry,
Speaker 2: and dog foods started very slowly to become a little
Speaker 2: bit better and then got really really good in the
Speaker 2: past fifteen years.
Speaker 1: Well, they got worse before they got better, for sure,
Speaker 1: because when they figured out that they could mass produce
Speaker 1: this stuff and sell it like gangbusters, they were like, well,
Speaker 1: what's the cheapest stuff we can put in here that
Speaker 1: won't actually kill the dogs most likely horse, So they
Speaker 1: started putting well, the horse was actually earlier in the
Speaker 1: century before World War Two. And then everybody's like, this
Speaker 1: is just wrong somehow, we don't can't put our finger
Speaker 1: on it, but we are not going to feed our
Speaker 1: dog's horse meat anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: After World War Two, that's when they started extruding stuff
Speaker 1: which apparently extracts a lot of vitamins and nutrients from food.
Speaker 1: They started adding a lot of fillers that are super cheap,
Speaker 1: and the food we were feeding our dogs was just
Speaker 1: tear and they came loaded with calcium.
Speaker 2: That's right. And like I said, food got better and
Speaker 2: better over the years, especially more recently, and these days
Speaker 2: there's a lot of debate on like what you should
Speaker 2: be feeding your pets. Everything kind of points to like
Speaker 2: real food. Like, if you're the best pet owner in
Speaker 2: the world, you're cooking your dog food and vegetables and
Speaker 2: stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, for sure, you Mey cooks that for all
Speaker 1: the time. You know, there's also some pretty good stuff
Speaker 1: you can order too. Yeah, oh yeah, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: I think that's probably dogs have the healthiest diet as
Speaker 1: a group now in their entire history with humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, dogs love veggies. I feed my dog's table
Speaker 2: scrap veggies all the time, and all of my dogs
Speaker 2: even before this crew, have loved vegetables. But I think
Speaker 2: they just like any kind of human food. They rarely
Speaker 2: see them turn their little noses up at anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, Like Mama will eat stuff I won't eat,
Speaker 1: like peas.
Speaker 2: Oh I love peas.
Speaker 1: So you said that dog food got better and better.
Speaker 1: The thing is is the reason why white dog poop
Speaker 1: suddenly disappeared is because it suddenly got better around the
Speaker 1: late eighties and nineties, Like people started being like, this
Speaker 1: is not stop selling us this stuff. It's not good
Speaker 1: for our dogs. And there was a quick change in
Speaker 1: the industry, and that led to lower amounts of calcium,
Speaker 1: which led to lower amounts of white white dog poop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: until it essentially just went away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they got more fiber in their diet now and
Speaker 2: just you know, more nutrient and vitamin rich dog food.
Speaker 2: I'm now noticing. I guess that I think about it,
Speaker 2: but I honestly never really thought about it until yesterday
Speaker 2: when I started reading up on this stuff that I
Speaker 2: guess you really don't see as much white dog poop anymore.
Speaker 1: And there's also like it's still not done. Like we're
Speaker 1: dogs definitely eat better than ever, but we're still like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, can they exist on a vegan diet?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Is dry dog food better than wet?
Speaker 1: Apparently wet dog food has eight times the greenhouse gas
Speaker 1: emissions of dry dog food, But if you ask the dog,
Speaker 1: they're like, no, we want we want wet. There's so
Speaker 1: the jury is still out, but it is clear that
Speaker 1: dog food is more is healthier than it ever has
Speaker 1: been in the history of dog food.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We back when we had Lucy before she left us,
Speaker 2: she had autoimmune issues Lucy and Buckley did, and so
Speaker 2: grain free diet. That's when we started sort of going
Speaker 2: grain free back then, and we kind of kept on
Speaker 2: that train through this new batch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen grain can be kind of hard on
Speaker 1: dogs sometimes. Yeah, it's not uncommon from what I saw too.
Speaker 1: And then fats too, depending on the kind of fat,
Speaker 1: it can lead to pancreatitis pretty quickly in dogs or
Speaker 1: even gastritis. And you don't want either of those because
Speaker 1: once they start, they can become chronic and that's sad
Speaker 1: for the dog because they have to eat the most
Speaker 1: boring blane diet imaginable.
Speaker 2: Should we finish up on what dog poop should look like,
Speaker 2: let's and now, if your dog is healthy, generally looks
Speaker 2: like because of the lack of calcium.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If you see white poop now and it's speckled white,
Speaker 1: that's probably worms and you want to do something about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And if you see the old school white poop,
Speaker 2: that means you know, someone's living seventy style, so it's
Speaker 2: got a big stash of I'm not going to name
Speaker 2: check any brands, but you know, what we fed people
Speaker 2: in the eighties are what we fed dogs in the eighties.
Speaker 1: They also raw diets often contain ground up bones, and
Speaker 1: that can cause the old school white dog poop too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So normal dog poop is a tube of poop.
Speaker 2: It should be firm and it should be like a
Speaker 2: light like chocolatey brown.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's thanks to our friends at All Dogs Poop,
Speaker 1: the dog waste cleaning service.
Speaker 2: Which is amazing. What should it not look like?
Speaker 1: Well, if it's orange, it means that your dog is
Speaker 1: not digesting it slowly enough. It's just kind of passing
Speaker 1: through largely undigested or too undigested, and it'll come out orange,
Speaker 1: and you want to look into that.
Speaker 2: What if it's yellow.
Speaker 1: If it's yellow, that means it probably has some mucus
Speaker 1: in it, which means that your dog is not tolerating
Speaker 1: its food very well. Usually the reason why is because
Speaker 1: you just switched their diet radically and all of a sudden.
Speaker 2: All right, If it's green, you know what that means?
Speaker 2: That means your dog's out there eating grass, probably because
Speaker 2: it has a little tum tum problem. I think that's
Speaker 2: usually when dogs mouond weeds and grass. But that can
Speaker 2: come out in the poop as grass.
Speaker 1: What about don't.
Speaker 2: Doesn't change much? Gray is no good? That means you're
Speaker 2: you got too much fat in the diet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again that can lead to pancreatitis.
Speaker 2: And finally, red.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially if there's red, that means your dog has
Speaker 1: blood in its stool, which means you should pick them
Speaker 1: up and take them to the vet. Right, then that's right.
Speaker 1: But also don't discount black tari stool. A lot of
Speaker 1: people don't realize that that means there's blood. They're bleeding
Speaker 1: internally as well. It's just higher up in the digestive tract,
Speaker 1: so it gets incorporated in the poop earlier and more
Speaker 1: completely than something like the blood that's red streaky, that
Speaker 1: means it's happening in the lower digestive tract.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've been a wash in dog poop lately because
Speaker 2: very sadly, our fourteen year old Charlie is becoming a
Speaker 2: little bit incontinent. And she's doing great, but she's got
Speaker 2: very stiff little peg leg back legs, and she's starting
Speaker 2: to just poop when the poop is there, instead of
Speaker 2: saying like I can make it to the door and
Speaker 2: asks to be let out. Yeah, it's no fun. But
Speaker 2: you don't put a dog down because you don't like
Speaker 2: cleaning up their poop.
Speaker 1: No, you just yell at them.
Speaker 2: So you just we're cleaning up a lot of dog
Speaker 2: beep lately.
Speaker 1: Did you say dog beep? Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 2: That's all right. It's no fun, but especially when you
Speaker 2: wake up in the middle of the night and it's
Speaker 2: like that's the smell wakes you up. Yeah, that's and
Speaker 2: it's just it's aging is no fun, aging animals, it's
Speaker 2: no fun. But we're in the middle of it. What
Speaker 2: are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Just yell at the dog.
Speaker 2: No, stop saying that.
Speaker 1: We want to thank our friends at IFL Science Mental Flaws,
Speaker 1: All Dogs Poop and K s n F out of Joplin, Missouri,
Speaker 1: Oh for the info for this one.
Speaker 2: You're listening to K s n F Oh dog poop
Speaker 2: talk all the time.
Speaker 1: That's right, and that means short stuff is up.
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