Dog keeps eating poo - sorry!!

joho

Morning all,

Sorry for the gross start to the day!

Our 11 year old choc lab has a habit of eating poo. Not her own (though she did do for a while) but cat poo and other dog poo. She snaffles it quicker than the blink of an eye, just as you are not watching her for an instant, and seems to be able to find it from miles away.

Why does she do it and how can I stop it? Much as I try I can't watch her for every single second that we are out.

Thanks
Jo

roobee13

Hi OP,

My 7 year old choc lab and 5 year old yellow lab do the same! Not all the time thankfully but it is gross isn't it?

I'm told it's to do with wanting to be the 'alpha' dog, i.e. the best dog has the best food and therefore the best poo. Yuk. My two do it infrequently but it's always each others as they must be in competition.

As your dog is female, could it be a submissive thing? In terms of trying to stop it, you may have to keep her on a tight leash I'm afraid. You could also try carrying a spray bottle of water and spraying her if you catch her doing it. I've heard other people use this as a deterrent method.

Sorry I can't think of other options, I'm sure other users will have loads of good suggestions!

SeduLOUs

My tip was going to be feeding pineapple to the dog who's poo i being eaten as I had a similar issue with my two. Not sure what to advise when it's other dogs out and about but would probably opt for a tight leash for a while, allow a sniff but then correct if he attempts to eat (and reward/distract with a treat) and hopefully you will be able to train him out of it.

joho

Nothing we do seems to work - neither rewarding/praising her for ignoring it, nor telling her off having eaten it.

If we see her heading for it we tell her 'No. Leave it' and she usually does - but she remembers where it is and will often get it on the next pass. Even on a lead you can't keep an eye on her all the time. It only takes a momentary lapse to give her time to find something.

We live in the country and can walk her off the lead almost from the front door, but I got so fed up of her doing this that I had been keeping her on a lead all the time. This morning I got a bit slack and, in a fit of being relaxed and letting her have some freedom, lulled into a false sense of security I left her off the lead. We hadn't even got 20 yards from the house and she'd found something and, blink, its gone!

Am truly fed up of it. It's no fun, for either of us, walking her on a 2 foot lead right at my heels all the time.

Cacran

We have a Beagle who eats poo. As Joha said, they are very quick to get it. I have had to wash the dogs mouth out in the past. That was gross. She eats her own poo if we don't clean it up quickly. She does not do it when she has just 'been'. She leaves it there, on the lawn and next time she is out, makes a quick dash to get to it.

It's awful.

GwylimT

Mine is a poo eater, his own and others, because of this we don't let him off the lead. We started muzzling him so when he came across a poo we could stress no, when he had started ignoring it the muzzle came off. He is much better now, but we do still praise him when he sniffs a poo and then walks on by.

fannyadams

I thought it was a mineral deficiency they were trying to correct or a habit they'd picked up in puppyhood?
I think the only SURE way to stop a dog eating stuff it shouldn't is to muzzle it.
My mates Labrador/poodle cross (I know it has a fancy pants portmanteau name) does it (but will eat ANYTHING in a plastic bag) and he walks the 'fluffy bundle' with a muzzle on.

Indie_Kid

fannyadams wrote: »

I thought it was a mineral deficiency they were trying to correct or a habit they'd picked up in puppyhood?

There's a local rescue centre who have a Facebook page and they were asking for tins of pineapple. They said that dogs eat their poo because of a mineral deficiency. If you give them pineapple, it's meant to stop them eating poo.

amibovvered

I read about the pineapple too but what I read is that it makes the poo taste unpleasant to them so they don't want to eat it. So still applies to only their own poo unfortunately!

My older dog ate poo as a youngster then grew out of it. Then came the new dog who started eating it so the older dog, then 8 years old, started again. I now muzzle them when I take them out, not pleasant but better than the alternative! They still try and eat their own poo in the garden if I'm not there to pick it up but I can live with that, at least I know they are inoculated and wormed. I don't trust the owners who don't pick up after their dogs to keep them as healthy and disease free as mine.

We sometimes get nasty looks on walks but if anyone asks I make a point of saying the muzzles are because they are scavengers. And at least it means I can let them run free where appropriate without worrying.

The biggest problem is the older dog used to love playing with a tennis ball on walks, she was obsessed with it. I've tried again recently, hoping the ball might take her mind off poo, but sadly she will run after the ball a few times then abandon it and look for poos.

joansgirl

My previous dog (Golden Retriever) used to eat other dogs poo. He never touched his own. I managed to work out that it was dogs who were fed on tinned or fresh meat, not dried food. I could never stop him. I tried a muzzle but that didn't stop him getting at any diarrhoea he found :eek: (Sorry to be so graphic). He spent his whole life on the lead

The current dog will eat fox poo and human poo (apologies again) and sometimes a bit of goose and duck. She doesn't go off the lead much now anyway because of the blue/green algae that is prolific around here.

I don't know the solution.

When on the lead both obey(ed) the command "leave it" but off the lead there is and was no chance.

BJV

My springer loves eating horse poo and I did speak to my vet about it. He said it would do him no harm but that we had to keep up top date with worming etc.


I saw a programme on Tv not so long ago which discussed poo eating. Not a nice subject but according to the programme think it was "what's is in your pets food" or something like that. and in your dogs defence the problem is because so many dog and cat foods are made cheap cuts of meat and god knows what so the manufacture has to add so many additives to make the food appealing to pets that even when it has been eaten and poo'd out it still smells like the original food.