Puppy Physics

Miki is our new field spaniel puppy. He’s also a very cute physics laboratory, perfect for exploring one of the abiding mysteries of puppy physics, to wit: how the “output” of a puppy (the guzzoutta, in technical terms) can exceed the “input” (the guzzinta).

Anybody who has owned a puppy has personally witnessed this mysterious phenomenon. You feed your puppy a certain amount of food, water, and assorted pieces of your home and belongings (the guzzinta), and your puppy produces puppy poo and puppy pee (the guzzoutta, and two of the foulest smelling substances ever discovered by science). The mystery? The guzzoutta weighs more, and occupies more volume, than the guzzinta. And this would appear to violate some deeply cherished laws of physics, such as Newton’s Fifth Theorum of Guzz, which states that guzzinta equals guzzoutta.

I’ve searched the Internet high and low, and I have not found any explanation for this puppy phenomenon. Nobody seems to know how puppies — those cute, adorable little things — can possibly produce so much guzzoutta from so little guzzinta. One speculation is that the puppy is actually secretly eating your furniture or walls when you’re not looking, but most people would notice their dining room table disappearing, so that explanation seems unlikely to me. Another speculation is that puppies “mow” your carpet a fraction of an each every day, but after a few weeks of that you’d be down to the padding — and at least some people would notice that, so again that seems unlikely.

My personal theory is that puppies have a power heretofore unknown to science: the power of poo-o-synthesis, which is like photosynthesis in plants, but not involving sunlight and without the attractive part. Poo-o-synthesis, I postulate, is a process wherein the puppy’s body combines guzzinta with the carbon dioxide and water vapor in the air to form guzzouta. The foul smell is related to the accidental production of methane and other short-chain aromatic hydrocarbons, and the sulfur compounds formed from pollution in the air. There’s one element of poo-o-synthesis that I haven’t yet figured out, though: where’s the energy come from? In photosynthesis, it’s the sunlight that provides that crucial energy. In poo-o-synthesis, that energy must come from something else…