can anyone help me,my 21 week old gordon setter is eating her poo, If I am not watching her she will scoff it back up again. I have tried giving her a row, putting corgette ( a tip I got in a dog book) but nothing has worked. It not very nice when your dog gives you a big slobbering kiss and all you get is the smell of fresh s***e!!

This is not uncommon in puppies and will not hurt them although I understand about the kissing you bit.  There can either be a behvioural or nutritional cause for this. 

The following are some theories as to why puppies may exhibit this behaviour:

Many puppies do this for no apparent reason and just grow out of it.   Dogs are scavengers after all and pups may not realise when young that food is going to be plentiful.

Firstly a dam would eat her puppies poo to keep the nest/den clean.   Puppies may observe this behaviour and copy it.

Also puppies tend to eat anything that smells in the least bit like food.    Dogs sense of smell and texture takes precedence over taste as far as their preferences go for ingestible material.

Nutritionally wise, if the food is not being digested properly it could still have a lot of unaltered ingestive material, and would therefore smell like food.  Dogs often eat cat poo for this reason.

Puppies may also ingest poo if they have ever been reprimanded or worse for relieving themselves in the wrong place.   They do not associate the punishment with the act of going in the wrong place, just the fact their owner throws a wobbly when there is poo around, so they get rid of it.

Wendy

Gprdon05,

The only solution is to pick the poo up immediately, without a fuss, distract her away from it first if you need to by tossing a toy or something.  

Have not heard about corgette, but I have heard about adding pineapple and that is supposed to help.  In my experience, even the products sold in pet stores or sometimes by vets do not work.  Nor does sprinkly the poo with hot sauce and waiting for the dog to try it.  Nor any of the tips for stopping the behaviour .. believe me, I've tried them all with many different dogs.

It's not an unusual behaviour and unfortunately it's quite normal for dogs to eat poo.  If not their own, cat poo, horse poo, fox poo, rabbit poo, chicken poo .... and whatever else is available.

Stacey

i had the same problem when my dog was younger, he grew out of in in the end, just try and be quick picking it up. i tried some tablets from pets at home but they didnt work for me so just think about that before you spend your money, good luck !!!!

I would definately try the pineapple (fresh is best ; ) and I've found garlic in the food is good too, only a light sprinkle of the granules is needed, but try to give it in some meat rather than with dry food :) 

Dill,

My poo-eater (he's nearly two) gets garlic in his food every day.

Dogs like the taste of garlic - pet food manufacturers often add it to dog foods. 

Stacey

I have labs and will eat anything !!!!!! I just make sure I have the worming up to date, and I don't lose sleep about it.

You can try Forbid or Deter which you can get from your vet.

Pumpkin is also very good, I found this to help with my poo eater. You just add a lil to each meal, but not to much as it can cause the runs. I just cooked it up like mashed potatoes and froze it, and pulled it out as I needed it.

Another thing you can do is go out with your dog and once your dog is done call your dog over excitedly and treat. The point is to make your self alot more exciting then the poop. If that doesn't work you can keep your dog on leash and once done pull dog away excitedly and treat, then go back after and pick the poo up...

What kind of food are you feeding? Sometimes this can also be a reason why they eat their own poo.

I use to have a dog that would turn around and eat it as he was pooping, yuck...

If you do a search on here you will get alot of info as well since this has been discussed alot...

Good Luck :)

My golden retriever started doing this at about 10 weeks old.  The only way I could stop her was to train her to leave it.  I clear away the poo immediately and she now knows that "I want it" and doesn't go near it if I'm in the garden.  If I don't see her doing it, however, she will still go for it but stops if she catches me watching her.  I think its instinctive scavening!  This training was the only way I could get her to stop eating it.  She's now 5 months old and hasn't done it for ages.     Good luck!

He he!! I know I shouldn't laugh as it's not funny when you are going through it. I became a bit of a party bore on this subject when my Mastiff cross took to the 'coprophagia habit....vets speak lol'. Trouble was, it wasn't her own poo she was eating, it was that of my older dog who was a Great Dane cross. Kim used to stand at Murphy's back end and catch it in her mouth as he was doing it!! MMM nice and warm! Tablets from the vets didn't work, and I'm afraid I have no tips to give you as I failed miserably!! The only benefit is that you dont have to pick it up yourself!! By the way, Murphy decided the pups behaviour was just too much to deal with too, and ended up hopping over the fence to nextdoors vegeatble patch and doing it among the furrows of the spuds!! (They never did find out which elephant was dropping his load in their plot!!)

We had this with our dobe.  He is 10 months now and he doesn't do it anymore - I can't actually remember when he stopped.  It was awful he would run in from the garden and go to give one of us a kiss and then you would know - I used to tried and grab him as he came in and wipe his mouth over, just in case he had eaten some poo!