Grass

If you'd rather not read a posting about what comes out of the hind side of a greyhound may I suggest you head over to www.cuteoverload.com where you can read about such lovely things as silly kittens and cute puppies. You see today's post is about some of the lesser known details of greyhound ownership. Things people don't tell you about when you adopt.

If you are still here I'm guessing you don't mind reading about dog poop. If you do, it's not too late to click over to Cute Overload. I won't mind. Really.

We call Rio our cow dog because his coloring resembles a cow a bit. Big black spots on speckled white fur. It seems he has a little more in common with a cow than we thought. Rio has a taste for grass.

I'm not sure why he likes eating grass so much, but every once and a while, when we're on our walks, Rio will start pulling blades of long grass to eat. Sometimes he looks up and there's grass between his teeth. Being the nice people we are, we kindly remove it for him. It wouldn't do to have a stranger point out that there's something green hanging out of his mouth.

The past few days Rio has been experiencing another side effect of eating grass. I'll get to that in a moment. Dogs are carnivores and opportunistic eaters. Other than grass, Rio doesn't eat too much vegetable matter. He's a meat kind of dog. And bread. He likes bread. And pasta. But not fruit and veggies.

His teeth are designed to tear into meat, and make it small enough to go down his gullet. He doesn't have the grinding teeth that herbivores have. He also has a short digestive system, which doesn't do such a good job of breaking down cellulose.

The result is, well, interesting. Still not too late to go over to Cute Overload.

The past few days when Rio has been pooing he's had something hanging out of his butt. At first I thought he had eaten string. Upon closer inspection I discovered that he had undigested blades of grass hanging out of his a$$. Couldn't leave the poor fellow like that, so I had to pull them out myself. They don't tell you about this part when you are thinking about adopting.

I'm sure it must have felt strange to Rio as well. Perhaps he eats grass as a form of canine Metamucil.

Now, if you need an antidote to this charming tale I really do suggest you head over to Cute Overload.