Is It Normal for My Dog to Do That? — When It Is, and When It Isn’t

1 The odd things, and where they stop being odd

Start with the short version. Most of what looks strange is ordinary dog behavior.

The dashes are deliberate. Where we could not find a sourced line for when a behavior stops being normal, the table says nothing rather than making one up.

2 The belief that the data overturns

Everybody knows dogs eat grass because they feel sick. The largest study of it says otherwise.

1,571 owners of plant-eating dogs, published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science in 2008:

Most dogs eating grass are not sick, and most do not throw up. It appears to be something dogs simply do.

That is not a reason to ignore it entirely. A habit that starts suddenly in a dog who never grazed, or a dog who eats grass and vomits every single time, is worth a question at the vet. And wherever you walk, what has been sprayed on the grass is its own subject.

3 The one normal behavior with a warning attached

The bursts of frantic running have a clinical name — frenetic random activity periods — and they are normal in every breed. Energy or excitement comes out sideways, the dog tears around the room, and then it is over.

For a flat-faced dog there is a condition attached, and it is the kind of thing a general list of “weird dog behaviors” never mentions. A flat-out sprint is exactly the situation where a brachycephalic dog meets his airway limit, and in heat that limit arrives fast.

So the rule here is not “stop him”. It is:

• Let him have them — somewhere cool, and on a surface he will not skid on.
• Listen while he runs. If the breathing turns loud, the game is over for now — the three-level scale in the sleep chapter is exactly this reading.
• Heat changes the answer, not the behavior. See heatstroke and BOAS (the breathing disorder of flat-faced breeds).

Normal for a Labrador, conditional for a Frenchie. That difference runs through this whole site.

4 When he eats the bag, not the food

A dog eating something that is not food, because it smells of food, is one of the most ordinary emergencies there is. A wrapper, a bag, the paper a sandwich came in.

The veterinary advice is consistent on two points, and the second one is the one owners get wrong.

1. The food smell makes plastic more attractive, not less. Whatever he grabbed, he grabbed it for the same reason he would have taken the food.

2. Signs of an obstruction: vomiting, not eating, belly pain, lethargy, no stool. And a dog who has passed some stool can still have a partial blockage. That is the part that costs time: the dog seems basically fine, produces something in the yard, and everyone relaxes.

Call the vet promptly, even if he seems fine. This is not a wait-and-see behavior, and for a small dog the margin is smaller again.

And here is the part that keeps you out of all of the above. Our opinion: almost every one of these accidents starts with a human mistake, not a dog one. Food gets left somewhere you are sure he cannot reach — and then the environment moves.

• Height deceives. A bag on the table stays where you put it until something puts it on the floor: a fan, a draft, a sleeve, somebody walking past.
• A door that is not properly shut is not shut. Moving the food to another room works only if the latch actually catches. A dog pushes an ajar door open with his nose and walks in, and the person who carried the food in there is not always the person who closes the door. If the room is the plan, the closed door is part of the plan — otherwise you moved the food rather than put it away.
• The floor while you cook is the fastest opportunity he gets. A piece of chocolate, a raisin, something greasy that will upset his stomach — and he is there before you are. A French Bulldog is much faster than he looks when food is involved. What is actually toxic is in toxic foods.

Move the food, not the dog. He is never going to learn to resist the smell of chicken, and that was never the job. You decide where the chicken is.

5 Twitching in his sleep: dreaming or something else

Paddling legs, little noises, a face that moves — that is a dreaming dog, and it can be normal. If he twitches often or all the time, that is not normal: ask your vet. The reason this question keeps being asked is that the alternative is frightening, so here is the comparison side by side.

Not every seizure involves the whole body. A focal seizure affects only part of the body, for example twitching in one area (VCA). If you are not sure what you saw, film it and show your vet.

Emergency: a seizure lasting more than five minutes, or more than one within 24 hours.

Two practical notes. Do not wake a dreaming dog by touching him — a startled dog can react before he is awake, and nobody involved deserves that. And the thing owners repeat to each other, which vets agree with: film twenty seconds on your phone. A short video tells a vet more than any description you can give.

6 Gas and hiccups: one mechanism, two symptoms

These are two different questions with the same answer underneath, and for this breed the answer is structural.

Yes, French Bulldogs fart more than most breeds, and there is a reason. Flat-faced dogs swallow more air when they eat, drink and pant. Work on brachycephalic dogs also reports stronger stool odor and more frequent flatulence, linked to how protein is digested. What helps, per the same research: highly digestible protein and moderate fiber, and cutting the air-gulping with a slow feeder and smaller, more frequent meals.

Hiccups are normal too, most common in puppies, and most often before eight months of age (Dogs Trust). They are mostly swallowed air as well — eating fast, excitement, sometimes tiredness or cold. In a puppy a bout can last up to an hour or so, and it should stop on its own (Dogs Trust).

Ask the vet if: gas is persistent or getting worse with discomfort — that is a check, not a food swap. Or if hiccups last more than an hour, happen many times a day, or arrive with vomiting, diarrhea or a change in appetite.

Call the vet right away if: he starts wheezing or his breathing becomes labored, or his belly is visibly swollen (VCA).

Our opinion: owners repeat this about food changes, and it is sensible — give a new food about a month before you judge it. One week tells you very little. That is experience rather than a study, and we label it as such. If any new symptom shows up after the change, call your vet instead of waiting. How much to feed covers the bowl side.

7 Drinking a lot of water

Normal intake is roughly 50 to 60 milliliters per kilogram a day, and it goes higher — up to around 90 — with dry food, heat and exercise. Excessive is defined as more than 100 milliliters per kilogram in 24 hours.

But the number is the second thing to look at. Trust the change from your own dog’s baseline more than any figure: a bowl that suddenly needs refilling more often than it used to is the signal, whatever the arithmetic says.

Same-day vet if the drinking comes with vomiting, lethargy or weight loss — or in an unspayed female, where a uterine infection is on the list.

What increased drinking turns out to be, in real cases, ranges from diabetes, kidney disease, Cushing’s disease, urinary infection and liver problems to nothing medical at all: a hot spell, or a switch to dry food. There is also a recognized behavioral cause, psychogenic polydipsia — drinking out of habit or boredom.

Two practical things. If it is not a same-day case, measure it before the visit: put a known amount in the bowl, write down every refill so the bowl never runs dry, and check what is left after 24 hours. And where we live, a dog drinks more in the heat and that is normal — which is the same rule again: watch the change, not the amount on a hot day.

8 Urine: the color, and the one emergency

People type this question more often than they admit, and the short answer is that gold is the color it is supposed to be.

Screens, light and the surface underneath all change how a color looks. The swatches are here so you know which way to look — the judgment belongs to your vet.

Worth asking about even when the color looks fine: many small pees or wanting out every few minutes, a new strong or sour smell, or dribbling.

And the one that goes now: a male dog straining with little or no urine coming out. It can look like constipation. When in doubt, assume it is the bladder — a blockage can become life-threatening within a day or two. And if he has not peed for 12 hours or more, call the vet — even if he is not straining.

9 Spike: our experience

Our stories and opinions on this page are our personal experience with one dog, Spike. One dog is not the measure for every dog — for your dog, your vet decides.

Spike’s reality  ·  Dominican Republic

“If the bag smells of something, he eats the bag.”

The habit of his that belongs on this page is the one in the quote. If a bag smells of food, the bag is food. It is the most ordinary thing in the world and it is the reason the section above exists, so we will not tell it as a funny story: plastic can obstruct a gut, the food smell is what makes it attractive, and a dog who has swallowed one gets a phone call to the vet rather than a wait-and-see evening — even if he seems perfectly fine and even if he produces something in the yard.

It has happened to us twice, and both times the mistake was ours.

The first time: a shopping bag with chicken in it was on the table we eat at. We reckoned it was too high for him. A fan blew the bag onto the floor, and that was the whole story.

The second time: the bag was put in another room, exactly so that he could not get to it — but the door of that room was left ajar. That is not an obstacle to a dog: he pushed it open, went in, tore the bag apart and ate all sorts of things. We went to the vet immediately, and it ended well because we reacted fast.

The lesson is not what he ate. It is what happened and how it is avoided: both of our “safe” measures failed because the environment moved — once a fan, once a door.

What we do about it is the boring answer: bags do not live where he can reach them, and the reach includes whatever a fan or an open door can add to it. Management beats cleverness, here as everywhere.

The other one is on the normal list and he does it exactly as described: after he pees, with other dogs around, he scratches the ground with his back legs, in a large and visible performance. That is scent marking, it is ordinary, and in his case it is also the opening move in a different chapter — avoiding a dog fight.

And he eats fast, from a raised slow-feeder bowl, which is the same fix the gas and hiccup section recommends. We did it for the speed. It turns out to be the same lever.

About the Author

Spike’s Dad

Not a veterinarian — the human behind Spike, a dark brindle Frenchie, for 7+ years. What is written here is checked as carefully as we can against the sources listed above. When real life with Spike differs from the studies, we say so.

How this site is researched →