Our experience with our little family companions over the years lead us to believe that it's more common than not for dogs to find well aged canine excrement for reasons known only to their primitive ancestors compelling. We know that it's been hypothesized that when dogs roll in excrement it may be to repel potential aggressors, that an ancient memory of survival surfaces. It's also been theorized that when dogs eat the excrement of other dogs it is meant to compensate for certain elements that may perhaps be missing in their diets.

When they do acquire the habit it is one that impels them to seek out these piles that appear so irresistible to them. We've found with our own, all of them on occasion suffering bouts of coprophagia, that's it's a seasonal compulsion, taking place for the most part in spring and fall. And that it's most often -- at least it was with ours -- a condition that assails the young, and with time they outgrow it. Either that, or the constant admonitions that come their way penetrates their consciousness, becoming a psychological barrier to its continuance.

When our current duo, Jackie and Jillie, began manifesting interest in old, rotted excrement we were alarmed for the threat it might pose to their health, although they're treated for internal parasites. Besides which, the human mind can't really tolerate the thought of ingesting that kind of waste matter for any reason. So our natural inclination was to be vigilant, to try to apprehend their impulse to seek it out and consume it. We could always tell when they had, and we had missed the opportunity to stop them, because they would lick their lips after indulging, something they rarely did with any other kind of comestible.

We'd been so upset over this inclination and its persistence a year ago that we flirted with the idea of muzzling them, to prevent them from eating it. But the very thought of restricting their freedom in such a way was ultimately repellent to us, and we set the idea aside as unpractical and demeaning.  Since then their interest has waned somewhat, manifesting mostly during those two seasons, when we become more alert to what they're up to with the intention of nipping it.

Several days ago while walking in the ravine we came across a woman walking two beautiful dogs; one very large, a graceful and beautifully proportioned hound, likely part-Great Dane, and a much smaller and equally beautiful part-boxer. Both dogs were tolerant of our two's usual hysterical greetings on seeing dogs they've never before encountered. And I was taken with the boxer-mix's friendliness, its anxiety to be noticed and petted. I wasn't so taken with the fact that it was wearing a muzzle, for the very purpose that we had contemplated placing one on our two, to prevent.

The woman walking them, a stranger to us, introduced herself as a dog trainer, and imparted what she must have thought was some free, useful advice regarding canine behaviour. We responded by citing some of our own, gleaned from reading canine psychology UBC professor Stanley Coren's 'The Intelligence of Dogs', and had a mutually respectful conversation over same.

Unspoken, on my part, was the observation that the lovely little part-boxer deserved better than to be forced to wear a muzzle which though it appeared to accept its limitations imposed upon it, still from time to time, seemed puzzled at its restricting presence, using its paws to attempt dislodging its obviously irritating presence.