Hi my 16 week old pup still eating poo even though ive been administering deter tabs i clean it up most of the time its just the odd occasion when for instance i need to go to the bathroom and come down she has eaten it she is fed nd  any help would be great

Have you tried pineapple in the food ........picking it up immediately as you already do is probably the best deterrant but they do grow out of it 
You could try a water pistol or lemon jif emptied and filled with water  hide it behind your back and when she goes to eat it (You have to be quick mind ) fire her in the face with the water without her seeing that it is you doing it .Worth a try.

Hope this helps

Roni

I've just this minute read in Your Dog Magazine that as well as Pineapple you can try raw courgette, I've just tried to get Oscar to eat some courgette but he wasn't impressed.

I've just become the proud owner of a 10 week old Golden Retriever.  She's doing well on the training (well, as well as can be expected!) but she always ate her poos.  I was told to add about an inch of grated courgette into her dry dog food.  It's magic - it  worked first time!  (I used the pineapple to make a fruit salad for the family!)

I have no idea if this one works but told it does - if you can get to the poo and drip a good few drops of tabasco on it he may sniff and leave but if he munches on it its the last one he does.  God forbid he gets a taste for curry !!!

Happiegirl , is she eating her poo while u have her on leash in the yard. An easy way to stop this is pull her away from the poop or cover it up until she walks away. It works!

Puppies will do this for several reasons - once you know what the reason is, you can work to stop it, but remember it is perfectly 'normal' behaviour for a dog......

1) Inapropriate toilet training - punishing a dog when you find a motion will result in the dog reasoning that if there is no faeces on the floor, you can't punish them, and this is the only way they have of removing the evidence.

2) Learnt from the dam. Puppies who were not raised with access to two different substrates will continue to soil the bed area - the dam will remove the soiling, and this become a habit for the puppies - they copy the good and the bad.

3) Enzyme deficieny, often cured by adding a small amount of pineapple to the diet.

4) Bacterial overgrowth - most common in puppies who eat other dogs faeces as they are naturally driven to add the good bacteria from other dogs and even other animals guts that they are lacking. Needs vet treatment with long term strong antibiotics to restore the balance.

5) Most common - inappropriate diet - food it too rich or contains indigestible parts - such as a high grain content. This is why dogs often eat 'cat litter tray crunchies'.......

HTH

'cat litter tray crunchies' are all my boys favourites , very gross!

my dog when she was a pup couldn't get enough of cat litter munchies,,, shen never ate dog poo and is now a very finicky eater in general,, only the finest of cheeses and liver wurst...
There was always a guilty look on her face (and smell) when she skulked away from the litter box,,,
She's way over her cat litter eating days, however in the last month has decided goose poo is a new treat.

Never had a cat but didn't think their food contained much grain mostly protein isn't it?  How do you know this is the most common?  From posts on here it would appear to occur whatever the dog is fed on. 
Another reason you could add is simple curiosity, expecially puppies who, like babies, explore with their mouths and then develop it into a bit of a habit easily exacerbated by the the attention it attracts for them or the increase of desirability of the poo by the owners apparent interest in getting hold of it too! :p :)

Yes, cat food is very high in protein - it's dog food that often contains grains.......

I find it's the most common reason as it's one of the easiest things to change, and the behaviour often stops when the diet is changed - if that doesn't work, then obviously you can then look to other reasons.

Curiosity could also come into the equation of course, but this is also part of the early rearing experience and how the puppy has been toilet trained....

>Yes, cat food is very high in protein - it's dog food that often contains grains.......

So surely there is a contradition here in blaming it on grainy food and then saying that is why they enjoy cat poo which of course they do! :) That would suggest that poos from food with less fibre is more attractive.

They enjoy it for different reasons - grains simply aren't digested as well as proteins, and so come out the 'other end' - but a high protein diet will also leave undigested excess in the excrement......

But the soft vegetative matter on grains is digested all that pops out is the stripped fibre no more attractive than straw I would have thought :)  and certainly, as I say, we see post about this problem from people feeding every diet going.

Hi happygirlie

I agree with Digger's last point most of all - the most common reason for coprophagia is diet.  What dog food are you feeding?

If it's something like Pedigree or Iams or Bakers then I'm not surprised.  Try feeding a better diet like Nature Diet, Burns or James Wellbeloved.

HTH

i am indeed feeding nd as stated earlier

my problem with my boy (20 months) is eating every other dog's poo.  He doesn't eat his or our other dog's just every so often he will eat some whilst out.  I am only assuming that those dogs whose owners cant be bothered to pick up after them must be fed something like tinned pedigree as he is fed on Arden Grange dry complete so maybe it seems very tantalising to him!

Some will eat cows manure, goose poo, duck poo etc, etc as well given the chance.  In fact, I had a bitch that wasn't particularly food orientated but she had a particular taste for wild goose poo.    Don't think there are many commercial grains in that?

Mine does exactly the same with wild goose poo - and nothing else.  She is encouraged by the green keepers to chase the numerous geese off the golf course we live on and so sees them as a territorial threat maybe - I dont know - but given the opportunity she has the odd nibble.  She is always looking for me out the corner of her eye and as she is trained to "leave" she will reluctantly leave it if I catch her about to. She is on a prescription diet so no opportunity to change it and see if it changes the habit.  I am not bothered as it is so infrequent and seemingly harmless to her - just another joy of dog ownership !!

It's normal for a lot of dogs to eat the faeces of other animals, especially cows and horses.  There are 'good' probiotics in these and it should do them no harm unless the cow or horse has just been wormed.  But eating their own or other dog's faeces is a different issue and not normal behaviour.  If you're feeding ND already, I don't have any other suggestions except for picking it up pretty fast.  By the way, it's also just a phase which some pups go through and one day they just stop doing it for no apparent reason.

Wish my 3 year old Yankee would stop it!!!!

Sorry I don't quite understand, why would a dog find eating dog faeces abnormal compared to cow, horse, duck, chicken etc?  It's all poo to a dog.  It's also quite possible that those dogs who don't have access to cow, horse, and duck poo are substituting with dog poo.  Rabbits and Rodents eat their own poo.

Dogs are by nature scavengers and they have evolved from individuals who scavenged. There are those that say it is all perfectly normal behaviour to a dog, but not to us.  But the reasons for it in today's society appear to differ depending on the dog and what works for one dog may not necessarily work for another. 

Our farm dogs used to eat fermented sewage in open drains, and that was disgusting, mind you this was about 30 years ago.  My current dog used to eat his own and other dogs, it was always the hard solid poos he went for, never the sloppy ones.  And he seemed to prefer them dried, i.e. poos that were not picked up by careless owners and left to ferment. 

Anyhow, what we did was train an alternative behaviour and reward it.  He was taught to leave and he was rewarded for compliance.  The trick is to make the reward more valuable to the dog than the poo.  And we also picked up poos in the garden immediately.   So avoidance and diversion worked for him. 

I don't know if this helps, Happygirlie, just another tip for you to consider.

BTW, we changed diet but it didn't have any effect at all.

Me too! Still having same problem with my pup at 5 months! Trying the pineapple as we speak, but dont know how long it may take to 'kick in' if it's going to work. Has anyone on here used 'Deter' ?
I know our diet is OK as it's Burns and naturediet plus the occasional raw chicken wing (hammered so he doesn't swallow it whole!)
BTW he prefers to eat it warm, doesn't seem that interested once it's cooled down (urgh)
All my dogs have loved goose poo, somehow that doesn't bother me quite so much (perhaps because it doesn't have that DISTINCTIVE smell!
K

My pup spins round as soon as he has finished to start eating it and I have to do this mad distraction thing to get him to leave his poo and come for his reward, I don't want to do anything to frighten him in case he associates doing a poo with punishment. Any one tell me what age their dog grew out of this habit?

The reason rabbits and rodents eat their faeces is because they are a specific type of animal (can't remember the scientific name, sorry) which produces certain faeces deliberately to be eaten.  The faeces that they eat are darker in colour and moist and their entire metabolism is geared around them needing to re-ingest these faeces for the nutrients they contain. 

Dogs are not part of this group of animals which need to ingest their own faeces in order to obtain essential nutrients in them.

Edited to say that if you continually make a big 'issue' out of eating the faeces, you may just inadvertently add value to them in the dog's eyes and therefore your dog will be more likely to eat them, not less likely. 

Yes, there is a metabolic reason for it I believe.  But there is too much difference of opinion as to why dogs do it with different people assigning it to different things depending on what they believe.  

You've mentioned diet as the most common reason; I'm not convinced that diet is the sole reason or the most common reason.  For example - why should a particular dog take to eating his own poo when others don't and they are fed exactly the same diet?  But they obviously get something out of it as in a lot of cases, they carry on doing it and it becomes an ingrained habit.  Dogs are still scavengers and there are some that would eat anti-freeze if you let them.

I agree making a big 'issue' of the behaviour can elevate its status in the dog's eyes and the circle continues.

I read this topic with interest as my mini wire dachshunds are all partial to eating poo of any description - the worse it is, the better they seem to like it.  My male is particularly partial to my pregnant bitches poo if we don't get there quick enough to pick it up.  It can be a nightmare and seems odd to a lot of people but I think you are right - they are scavengers and by nature, will eat whatever is available.  The dog we imported from Germany is much the same and they have all been fed on everything from raw tripe  and biscuit through to complete food and nature diet - nothing made any difference.  Vigilance and quick aim with the water pistol and the poo shovel are my only deterents!  Another poster talked of deter tabs - what are they?

Sue

yes mine has just found the joys of wild goose poo in the last month,,, and she's a 6yo

my rottie started eating poo.  We changed her diet but it did not work.
you know wot we did? we taught the 'leave' command!  she has not done it since.  Eating poo fast becomes a habit and u need to break the habit.
If it is only ur dogs poo, then either pick it up straight away, or i hear sprinkling pepper onto it will put them off ever doing it again!  My problem however was she was eating every poo in sight, inc horses, fox and other dog poo, so we taught her the leave command, which u can teach quite easily in ten minutes and get them to 'leave' their food when u put it down until u say, this helps especially well.

Sue
I mentioned 'Deter', I saw it on a website and if added to their food is supposed to make them stop eating it. I don't like to put anything I don't really understand into my dogs, which is why I asked if anyone else had used it.

Kat

Funny but was discussing this on topic of feeding.  My girl loved eating other dogs' poo which upset me no end.  I tried pineapple but that didn't stop it, I tried 'No' command and that didn't work either.  I just had to walk her as much as possible on farm land rather than our park and woods (although we have to walk through these to get to farmland).  I was feeding her Purina but when James Wellbeloved was on special offer I bought that and after about 2 weeks the Coprophagia habit improved and I put 2 and 2 together.  I decided to test this by trying her on Pedigree Chum and hey presto the Coprophagia returned within about a week.  It can't be just coincidence that change in diet changed her behaviour so dramatically without any other intervention.  She has been fed only on JBW since then (about 10 months and she is 20 mnth old) and although once in a while she will pick up a tasty faeces this has probably happened only a handful of times since changing to JBW. 

I have to say though that one condition of buying our dog was that whoever takes her for a walk picks up the poo and disposes of it responsibly and if all dog owners did that I wouldn't have had this problem.

p.s. she likes other animals' poo as well such as horses, rabbits (particularly distracting at dog school where she prefers to chew them to the spam I have as rewards) and she likes ducks, and other birds think probably pheasants as we see quite a few of them.  The change of feed changed the dog poo habit and the horse poo eating as well but she still likes the rabbits. 

I wonder if some dog foods are more easy to digest than others.  If the likes of Purina and Pedigree chum are difficult to digest then the dog will not be absorbing the nutrients causing the dog to seek a source in other dogs' poo or inthe case of dogs eating their own it might be the rabbit type of behaviour because rabbits only part digest their food which is why they eat their poo to get the nutrients they missed the first time round. JBW does seem to highlight that they are easier to digest.  Just a thought

Hi - just found this link it might help.