regardless of knowing his own scent my dog smells his own pee almost every day... sometimes quite intently, it makes me wonder if there's something else going on there
My cats do that as well! Since they dig into the sand to hide their smell, i think they do that to check whether they can smell some more and need to put some more sand on top
the best consciousness test is observing a creature perform a mirror test to some other kind of creature.
clearly dogs are mirror testing grass somehow, and making sure they don't start growing brains, either by eating some, or breaking the grass leaves by rubbing their back in the grass.
when they roll in other dogs faeces, they are performing a mirror test on their owner..