Whatever happened to white dog shit? Part one

Do you remember when you were a kid and you used to mow the lawn, and every now and then, usually somewhere out near the front of the yard by the road, you'd come across white dog shit? Do you remember how you used to run that white dog shit over with the mower and *ka-chunk* it would be instantly turned to a cloud of smelly dust before disappearing forever?

Well folks, you may consider that to be just a part of growing up, a sweet childhood memory, something that we all get to experience, but I have sad news - white dog shit is almost gone! Think about it... when was the last time you saw a piece of white dog shit? It's been a long time hasn't it? What ever happened to white dog shit?

I actually know what happened to white dog shit. I figured out the answer to this great mystery more than 10 years ago. These days there are a lot of websites and blogs dedicated to white dog shit, and with a little Googling you can eventually find out to what happened to it, but to save you time here's what I know...

Obviously dog shit doesn't start out white, it starts out some shade of brown and then goes through some process to become the famous white dog shit we remember from when we were children. You probably remember white dog shit from your lawn mowing experiences as being crumbly - one hit with the lawnmower and it was instantly turned to dust. The crumbly whiteness of white dog shit is caused by calcium and other inorganic salts left behind as the water evaporates and the organic components of the crap are consumed by microorganisms and other processes. Bleaching by the sun is also responsible for some of the whitening process. So white dog shit is what's left over after most of the the organic material and water is gone from the shit and the remaining material is bleached by the sun. So why don't we still see white dog shit today? I believe the answer to this lies in two things: 1. changes in the diet of modern dogs, and 2. stricter regulation of dogs.

In the heyday of white dog shit it was common for people to go to the butcher for their meat and the butcher would usually have dog bones available for people to buy so their dogs could chew on them. Nowadays most people buy their meat at supermarkets and the bones are usually not on display or available there, plus there are many cheap varieties of processed pet food available now. So dogs these days aren't eating as much bone as they used to, and therefore they aren't crapping the same calcium rich turds that they used to. I believe this is the main reason why white dog shit has become so rare.

Not only has a different diet caused the disappearance of white dog shit, but I also think tighter regulations for dogs crapping on parks and pavements has meant that turds don't hang around for a long time in public places like they used to, giving them less opportunity to dry out and turn white. Combine this with the fact that regulations on letting your dog run free are much tighter now and the result is less dogs running around leaving less turds behind, and those that are left behind don't stick around long enough to go through the processes necessary for them to turn white.

So to conclude, a reduction in the amount of calcium rich bones in the diet of dogs, along with stricter regulations, is what's responsible for the disappearance of white dog shit.

But who knows, maybe one day these things will change and we'll see a resurgence in the occurrence of white dog shit... perhaps white dog shit will make a comeback!!


Be sure to check out my second blog post on white dog shit, which includes theories for the disappearance of white dog shit, and amazing uses of white dog shit!
https://www.badperson.net/2019/09/whatever-happened-to-white-dog-shit-2.html


-Dave Bad Person