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INADVERTENT AND INTENT

After sleeping late and enduring the slow pace of my morning rituals, Pump's first move when we get outside never varies. She takes two steps out the door and unceremoniously squats. She crouches deeply, fully committed to the pose, with only her tail—curled high out of the way—pulling her body up. The torrent of urine released (surely record-breaking this time) seems accompanied by a relaxing of the muscles of her face—and by a growing guilt on my own that I made her wait so long. She watches the stream of her own urine wandering by her as it finds cracks in the sidewalk in which to divert itself cleanly.

As much as is being said with a bark, snarl, or wagging tail, vocalization and posture are not the only media of communication for dogs. Neither is a match for the informational possibilities of smells. Urination, as we saw earlier, is the means of odorant communication most conspicuous to us. It might be hard to believe that the release of the bladder is a "communicative act" right up there with a polite conversation between friends or a politician orating before his constituents. At some level, it is like both of these: it is part of normal dog sociality, and it can also be a bellowing self-promotion writ on a hydrant.

You might balk at calling the moist message left high on a lowly fire hydrant the same kind of communication that humans use—and not just because they are talking out of their rumps, not their faces. Crucially, we communicate (most of the time) with intention: rather than yammering out loud to our own left hand, we tend to direct our communications to other people—people who are near enough to hear us, not otherwise distracted, who know the language, and can understand what we're saying. Intention distinguishes communication done with others in mind from the automatic oof! uttered on being hit in the belly, blushing at a compliment, a mosquito's constant buzzing, or the unmindful bit of information imparting done by traffic lights and flags at half-mast.

Urine marking is peeing with intention. The morning's blissful release relieves the strain on the bladder, but most of the time some is held back for later use in marking. Presumably the urine is the same urine: there's no evidence of an independent channel or means by which to modify the odor they are emitting. But marking behavior differs in a few key ways. First, in most adult males, and some gender-bending females, marking is characterized by a prominently raised leg. There are individual and contextual variations on the so-called "raised-leg display," from a modest retraction of the rear leg up toward the body, to hoisting the leg up above the hip points, above vertical—certainly also a visual display for any other dogs in the vicinity. Both allow for a directional flow of urine, aimed to land at a conspicuous site. (One can squat and mark, too, although it is a quieter affair, perhaps for messages better whispered than shouted.)

Second, the bladder is not emptied when marking; urine is doled out a little at a time, allowing for greater distribution of scent over the course of the dog's travels. If you've left your dog indoors long enough that he races outside to squat, this urgency might preempt his ability to cache some urine for later marking. Thus the fruitless raised-leg displays you may witness, waving dryly at bushes, lampposts, and trash cans.

Finally, dogs usually urine mark only after spending some time sniffing the area. This is what elevates the odor exchange from Lorenz's notion of flag planting to a kind of conversation. Researchers keeping careful tally of dogs' marking behavior over time found that who has marked before them, the time of year, and who is nearby all affect where and when they mark.

Interestingly, these message bouquets aren't left indiscriminately: not every surface is marked. Watch a dog sniff his way down the street: he will sniff more locations than he will squirt. This indicates that not every message is the same—and the message