Living in the UK, it’s no surprise that we see our fair share of rainy days, and for dog walkers this often means muddy walks too. Owning a Jeep and being part of the community comes hand in hand with venturing out on adventurers with the family and our four-legged friends come rain, mud, snow or shine!
To celebrate our nation of dog-lovers, we wanted to discover if a love of mud is down to the breed or more of a personality trait, so we set out with forensic soil expert, Lorna Dawson, to find out which pup is really the UK’s muddiest.
Watch our video below to see how we found out which pup was the muddiest, featuring our own star of the show, Toby the Swamp Dog (@toby_swampdog).
Toby wasn’t the only dog involved in the trial, as we sent out Muddy Dog kits to over 60 different dogs and dog owners across the UK, covering not only the UK’s most popular breeds but a variety of mixed breeds too!
We asked each of our owners to write a brief description about their pups, so we’ve inserted a few of our favourites below:
Despite his small stature, Ollie Mo’s love of mud knew no bounds, and in a comparison between weight of mud collected vs. weight of the dog, this Yorkshire Terrier took first place on the Paw X Paw podium. Collecting 0.29% of his weight in soil, he was followed in second place by Evie, a Bearded Collie, who collected 0.15% of hers.
Not surprisingly, as the winner of the mud vs. weight category, Ollie Mo the Yorkshire Terrier, collected over 14g of soil on his walk, four times more than any other small dog. Ollie absolutely loves mud and has to have a bath most days, showing that it’s not just about the size of the dog, but its individual personality that decides how muddy they’re going to get.
This muddy pooch is Badger and is lucky enough to live on the South Downs, where mud and water can be found in abundance.
Balls are this English Springer Spaniel’s second love, and he loves trotting along with his owners while they’re out on horse rides. Ever the one to make friends, Badger will share his dinner scraps with the family’s rescue hens, but does know when to avoid the sheep!
It comes as no surprise that this shaggy-coated Bearded Collie, Evie, is the reigning queen in the large category. Evie’s favourite pastime is walking through the countryside and herding up her family on family outings the same way a sheepdog would herd sheep.
Meet Houndslow, a one year old Saint Bernard. Despite sleeping between 18-20 hours a day, he loves nothing better on his daily walk than running and jumping into every single wet and muddy puddle - an apt winner of the Giant breed category!
Working with dog owners across the UK, we asked them to brush their pups down after their daily walk and send them to us for analysis. Looking at the dog’s size, weight, coat type and personality traits, we worked with forensic soil experts at the James Hutton Institute to analyse them and discover which dog was in fact the muddiest.
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