Through a complex industrial process involving heat, pressure, and meat by-products, dog food can be infused with helium (which is itself a by-product). This lighter-than-air dog dinner is also practical- a 50 pound sack would be roughly the size of a metro bus. What comes out of the south end of a north-going dog will never hit the ground; instead, it will float harmlessly up and into the upper atmosphere (ultimately settling into a layer called the doodysphere) to be broken down by radiation from the sun. A suitable bribe to an upper-level bureaucrat in the FAA should keep airline complaints to a minimum. Once this layer is fully populated you will hear no more gripes about global warming, since the product will prevent much of the most harmful radiation from reaching the surface of the earth. Dogs will find it amusing that after eating, their barking voices are squeaky high. Dog owners walking their dogs through the park will no longer have to carry rubber gloves and doodybags.-- Grogster, Jun 10 2010 Someone's gonna come in and put this one down with them thar "laws of physics". Here's a preemptive [+] for creativity.-- DrWorm, Jun 10 2010 You might get squeaky barks and farts.-- nineteenthly, Jun 10 2010 Hypothetically, if this did work, then you'd have to be careful not to walk behind your dog. The lift generated by helium combined with the poo's post-rectal inertia would send it up at a steep diagonal!-- DrWorm, Jun 10 2010 Squeeky Barksanfarts: wasn't she a torch singer in the 1940s?-- mouseposture, Jun 10 2010 In a strange twist of product research karma, I suppose we could do human trials before moving on to serve it to animals; however, I haven't quite figured out how the water would stay in the toilet after mounting it on the ceiling.-- Grogster, Jun 10 2010 Totally impractical, but amusing. [+]-- 8th of 7, Jun 10 2010 What worries me is heliums ability to escape almost any form of captivity given time, and brown rain does appeal to me, however bun for raining down dog poo on those foolish enough to be outside when the brown apocalypse comes [+]-- ComatoseSheep, Jun 10 2010 This would never work! What you need is a little helium balloon assembly strapped to the back of your dog's ass. When he/she does the poopy, the poop falls out of the ass and into a bag that suspends from a hook around the tail. The weight on the tail hook sends an electric signal to the assembly where it retrieves the bag, encloses it around a helium pump that is located on your dog's back and fills the balloon the rest of the way with the helium. Finally, the bag is released and the whole thing just goes up and up. Out of sight, out of mind.-- daseva, Jun 10 2010 Really, [daseva], wouldn't a colostomy be simpler?-- mouseposture, Jun 10 2010 Or just send all the dogs up on balloons? And the tins of dog food. And tin openers I suppose. Could get busy up there.-- pocmloc, Jun 10 2010 //Wouldn't the dog just fart the gas out?// Some of it, no doubt, but stool's got a fair amount of gas mixed in. You can see it on abdominal flat films, as a sort of stippled appearance, that stool has, distinguishing it from solid tissue. Or so I was taught, anyway.-- mouseposture, Jun 10 2010 //stippled stools and meatloaf is a new one// Commonplace, really.-- mouseposture, Jun 11 2010 The helium wouldn't separate from the by-products in the dog food because... hey, wait a minute, I guess EVERYTHING in dog food is by-products, so... uh, to continue; it wouldn't separate because your average dog eats like his house is on fire. That, coupled with the fact that food eaten that fast travels through the alimentary canal of a dog in roughly 20 minutes (thirty minutes for weenie dogs) means that there is not nearly enough time for separation before being launched into the wild blue yonder as, ironically, dog by-product.-- Grogster, Jun 11 2010 //launched into the atmosphere as, ironically, dog by-product//wait... has a self-contained "fart remover" just been invented ?-- FlyingToaster, Jun 11 2010 I would worry, though, that potty-training a new puppy would involve a lot of ceiling cleaning.-- devilben, Jun 11 2010 "They" were working on a dog food which was completely digested so that it would never poop, so i heard.-- nineteenthly, Jun 11 2010 1 cubic meter of helium at standard pressure and temperature, has a buoyancy of about 1.08kg assuming a dog can chow down on about .25 kg of food per meal. he would have to consume 250 liters of helium.
In conclusion: the poor dog would be spend more energy eating than gained if given food that was less dense than air, and I don't think the digestive system is meant to handle such a gaseous diet.
I do like the idea of cloudy with a chance of dog-poo so I'll remain neutral-- metarinka, Jun 11 2010 [nineteenthly] NASA did it in the 1960s for Mercury astronauts. I suspect that *never* pooping would do something bad to the dog's colon, though.-- mouseposture, Jun 11 2010 Although a dog that never poops would be rather deleterious to my marketing strategy for Helium Charged Dog Food, I have to admit that an unused hole at the end of the dog presents other exciting possibilities, such as a reflector attachment or a trailer hitch or some sort of lawn mowing attachment...-- Grogster, Jun 12 2010 //Someone's gonna come in and put this one down with them thar "laws of physics". //
Okay, I'll do it. Ahhhhhhhh...damn, can't do it. It's terrible physics and it makes us all look like nitwits. Still, I like the image of floating doo, and especially the great stratospheric clouds of doo saving the planet.-- ldischler, Jun 12 2010 Excellent.-- DrWorm, Jun 12 2010 You never know. Maybe the Arkansas state legislature can be convinced to repeal the laws of physics.-- mouseposture, Jun 12 2010 I would love to hear my dad's dog bark in a squeaky helium voice.-- RayfordSteele, Jun 12 2010 People already hate dogs that bark all high and squeaky, so feeding the little mutts this stuff would probably drive us into putting a permanent end to all Chihuahuas.
I'd bun for that, but respect for the laws of physics prevents me.
It's not just that a Rover's-rectum worth of helium can't lift much more than a soap bubble, it's the fact that the magic poop doesn't float directly upward and away.
The poo drifts sideways, smearing walls, faces and windshields, and rises very slowly until the helium expands enough to burst out, leaving shredded dooky that droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.
(Sorry for the Shakespeare there, but I think that Bill's "strained/droppeth" line is an Elizabethan constipation joke.)
Even if this idea did work as described, there would be fluffy dog feces plastered on the underside of overhangs, tree branches and dog's tails. [ ]-- baconbrain, Jun 13 2010 random, halfbakery