Why Dogs Smell Each Other's Butts

When he asked, the dogs refused him.
You are unclean, they told Coyote,
you are not a dog.
So the dogs undressed for their sweatbath
and entered the sweatlodge without him.

Coyote envied the glossy fur coats
the dogs had hung outside the lodge.
He thought of stealing them,
but he decided not to.

Instead he threw the long coats
in a great pile,
and wiped his muddy feet across them.
Then he set fire to the sweatlodge roof
and said in a loud voice:
Oh what will the dogs do now,
Coyote has taken their fur!

From behind a rock, Coyote sat laughing
as the naked dogs rushed
into the cold out-of-doors,
grabbing for a coat,
afraid there might be too few
to cover everyone.

Years later, as the story goes,
with every dog zipped in someone else's fur,
dogs smell each other's butts,
looking for their own.

Meanwhile Coyote is still grinning,
off in the hills somewhere,
rolling in red dirt,
thinking how crude
to be a dog,

how much more clean,
how much more fun
to be Coyote.

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Credited to Lowell Jaeger