Really pee on fire hydrants?

We’ve all seen it; pictures of dogs using fire hydrants as bathrooms, cartoons of dogs heading for the red statue for some privacy.

But do our canine friends really, instinctively, use, or want to use, fire hydrants as their toilet?

Are our dogs born with the urge to use hydrants? Or is it more a learned attribute?

All signs point to convenience.

To dogs, a fire hydrant is just like any other material thing they can mark.

Anything and everything is fair game in the quest for a spot to call their own.

In the wild, and the in the times before big cities, dogs used everything in nature from trees to bushes to just the plain old ground. Now, with more and more buildings and urban areas, where’s a dog to go?

Think of a hydrant as a shortened metal tree.