Dogs should
be on a leash when walking, so you have control over the dog in case
a luscious pile of feces is found along the way. Sometimes, the only
way to prevent coprophagy is to fit the dog with a wire muzzle. The dog
will be able to sniff, pant, and do most things dogs do, but the dog
will not be able to eat with the muzzle on.
DO NOT LEAVE A MUZZLED DOG UNATTENDED.
Copyright © 1997-2007, Foster & Smith, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
C 2006 Drs. Foster and Smith, Inc.
Reprinted as a courtesy and with permission from PetEducation.com
(
http://www.PetEducation.com)
On-line store at
http://www.DrsFosterSmith.com Free pet supply catalog:
1-800-323-4208
*****************************
Feces Eating
Is there any way to get my puppy to stop eating her poop?
Ah yes, the poop-eating-puppy. Rest assured this is a very common complaint
among dog owners but one which can be overcome with patience and persistence.
The name for this disgusting behaviour is Coprophagy (eating feces).
There may be underlying reasons for Coprophagy that might need professional
attention. Never punish your dog for a behavioral problem that can be
modified by positive reinforcement as there can be many underlying causes.
Coprophagy may be a displacement or compulsive behavior in response to
stress, frustration, or anxiety. A dog that is tied up in the back yard
for many hours a day is lonely and frustrated. This often results
in displacement behaviors such as barking, digging, and Coprophagy. It
may be an attention-seeking behavior. Or, Coprophagy may be caused by
a nutritional (thiamine or vitamin-B) or digestive enzyme deficiency in
some dogs. Have your vet do a thorough checkup on your dog for dietary
deficiencies before starting any treatment.
One thing we have found to be helpful is to never allow your
dog to eat 'tootsie rolls' from the cat's litter box. The feces along
with the clay or wood chips can be ingested and cause harm. Since most
dogs have a fondness for cat food, do not allow them to eat more cat food
than they do of their own. Cat food is so called for a reason...it is
for CATS.
8 in 1 Deter Coprophagia Treatment for Dogs is a product that
many dog owners have used with good results.
"My dog eats his own poop!" exclaims the shocked human family
member of an otherwise-perfect canine. Or, embarrassed to come right
out with it, the human says, "I need to ask about this thing my dog does.
It's really strange and disgusting…" The average person doesn't seem
to discuss poop-eating dogs with friends and family, so people don't
realize it's a common dog behavior.
Natural Behavior
Mother dogs clean their nursing puppies and eat the feces. With
pups in the nest, you can imagine the unhealthy situation that would
result from the waste being allowed to accumulate. Cats perform this task
for their kittens, too. Other adult dogs in the family sometimes take
over motherly duties in times of need, such as a litter too large for
the mother or a mother who is ill or dies.
False pregnancies are normal in intact female dogs, and female
dogs tend to cycle on the same schedule with other females in the same
household. Other females who are in false pregnancy are often well equipped
to mother some or all of the pups in another female's litter.
You can see that eating dog feces is not at all an unusual behavior
for dogs. When the pups start eating solid food and walking well enough
to get out of the nest to poop, mom can stop the cleaning duty. But
the habit can certainly persist in her, and the hard-wired instinct
probably exists in most dogs, ready to be triggered by various life situations.
Triggers
Sometimes we don't know why a particular dog starts eating poop,
but certain conditions can trigger the behavior. Since some of these
indicate a dog who needs help, you'll want to consider them as possibilities
for what is going on with your dog.
1. A dog with a physical problem that causes excessive hunger,
pain, or other sensations may resort to eating feces. If your adult dog
who has not previously had this habit suddenly develops it, take the
dog to your veterinarian for a check-up.
2. A dog who is not getting enough to eat or is going too long
between meals may eat feces. Your veterinarian can help you evaluate
the dog's weight and can suggest a feeding schedule and amount. Sometimes
it takes experimentation to see what works best for a particular dog.
3. A dog with intestinal parasites or other condition that creates
blood or other fecal changes may eat feces. One dog may eat the feces
of another dog who is shedding something like this in the stools. A fresh
fecal specimen to your veterinarian for evaluation can detect some
of these problems.
4. Sometimes a change of diet helps. There doesn't seem to be
any one food that is right for all dogs, and your dog may need something
different than you're currently feeding. Be sure to make any changes
of diet gradual, mixing the new food in with the old over a period of
several days or weeks, to give the dog's intestines time to adjust and
avoid diarrhea from the change.
5. Some dogs develop a mental connection that they will be punished
if their humans find them in the same room with feces. Dogs react to
this fearful situation in various ways, and one way is to eat the feces
so it will not be there to make the human angry. This is one of many
reasons not to use punishment when housetraining a dog.
6. Boredom can cause dogs to do all sorts of things, including
eat feces. Interesting toys that have treats inside them for the dog
to get out can help with lots of boredom-based problems.
7. Dogs may do just about any wild thing when suffering from
separation anxiety. If that is the problem, this won't be the only symptom,
and you'll want to help your dog work through the separation anxiety.
High Anxiety (calming spray)
Sanitation
The number-one thing you can do to help overcome feces eating
is to keep your dog's area clean of feces. This means housetraining,
and supervising the dog whenever the dog is in the designated relief
area. It's obviously not healthy for dogs to eat feces, and preventing
the dog from carrying out the habit is also basic to getting the habit
to fade.
It's not healthy for humans or dogs to have the feces lying
around, either. Until a dog is fully housetrained and the feces-eating
habit has died out, picking up after each bowel movement is an important
tactic. After the dog's habits are steady, you may be able to pick up
just once a day if you have a private place for the dog to use.
Food Additives
Some people swear by food additives to stop a dog from eating
feces. Sometimes the theory is that the additive provides a nutrient
the dog is seeking when eating feces and thus the dog will no longer
crave feces. Other times the theory is that the additive makes the feces
taste bad and the dog will not want it.
Before you try adding any of these things to your dog's food,
consult your veterinarian about whether the particular additive is
safe for your particular dog. Don't expect any additive to be a miracle
cure. These things tend to work for the occasional dog, but chances
are pretty good that your dog won't be the one.
Bait and Switch
While you're hanging out with your dog to supervise, you can
hurry the process of fading out the feces-eating habit with a simple
and pleasant training technique. The tools you'll need are a collar or
head halter for the dog, a leash, and small treats your dog values highly.
If your dog is easily handled, the collar will do. If the dog
is extremely determined to eat the poop, extremely fast or strong,
have a behavior specialist fit your dog with the correct size head halter,
introduce your dog to it gently, and give you one or more lessons on how
to use the head halter safely and effectively. It gives you more control
over the dog's mouth than a collar, and if your particular dog needs it
for this training you'll be glad to have the skill for other training situations,
too.
Take your dog out to potty on leash. As soon as the poop hits
the ground and the dog shows interest in it, call the dog to you. Use
the leash not to jerk the dog, but simply to keep the dog from being
able to reach the feces.
Keep the treats out of sight.
The instant the dog reaches you, praise the dog, whip out a
treat and give it. Then back away from the dog, praise and give another
treat for coming to you, and repeat that for a total of three to five
times. At this point you have really taken the dog's mind off the feces.
Go on indoors with the dog and come back out without the dog
to clean up. Once you have good control and a good rapport with the dog,
you can go ahead and clean up while the dog is still outside. As you
set this habit more strongly through repetition, you will be able to
do the bait-and-switch with the dog on a long line, coming to you at
the back door for a treat. Eventually you'll be able to do bait-and-switch
without a leash or line on the dog. Keep up the same energy and level
of reward, if you want the dog to keep responding!
Talk about It
After the dog has been prevented from eating feces for a considerable
length of time, the habit tends to fade. That makes supervising the
dog and working on this in the positive, bait-and-switch way very worth
your while. Start the intervention as soon as you notice the dog eating
feces, because the less time a habit has been going on, the more easily
it will fade.
Help your friends and family by talking about this problem.
You'll help their dogs in the process, too, because some people try
punishment to break the habit. As you know now, that doesn't work, and
it's destructive to the dog's trust in people and to the family's relationship
with their dog. Let's bring this "dirty little secret" out into the
open.
back to top
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You Must
Understand Your Dogs Behaviour if you are going to Change it!
Jackie Drakeford
We humans spend
a lot of time trying to train out behaviour that is perfectly acceptable
to dogs, anything a dog chooses to do is acceptable to that dog, and one
of the most revolting practices to our minds is when dogs eat faeces, or
coprophagia.
In order to change a behaviour we need to understand it first and
we also need to know if or when to compromise. There are several
causes for coprophagia, several ways to cure it, and we need to realise
that a proportion of dogs will not be cured and so the behaviour has to
be managed.
Eating herbivore dung is actually beneficial to dogs because it contains
part-digested vegetable matter presented in a form from which dogs can
easily access nutrients. No harm can come to a dog from this so
it is best to ignore it.
Dogs that are fed lightly cooked or minced raw vegetable matter with
their meat seldom show any great interest in herbivore muck although
dogs on processed food hoover it up eagerly. So if you really don't
want your dogs to do this, feed them vegetables or a vegetable powder
such as those made by Dorwest Herbs or keep them on a lead when near grazing
land.
Nourishment
Eating carnivore muck is another matter, especially with dogs that
major in eating other dogs' faeces or even their own.
Dogs are programmed to do this because it extracts every last bit
of nourishment out of the food. Carnivores have short guts and food
goes through it quickly, leaving their muck full of unused nutrients.
In primitive human sicieties, or unforgiving environments such as
the artic, a dog's survival can depend on coprophagia. This is therefore
a hard habit to break once it has been established because it is a natural
instinct, albeit one that never comes to the surface unless needed.
Best management is to keep kennels clean and dogs well exercised,
never giving a bored dog the opportunity of amusing itself by finding a
new foodstuff.
I have heard that adding pineapple chunks or courgettes to dog food
will make the dog less likely to eat its own muck but that can get expensive,
even if the dog would eat them. As for scattering chilli powder
on the faeces, well, you might just as well shovel them up instead as youare
there.
Adult Dog
Where several dogs are kennelled together the lowest-ranking dog
will often eat its own muck because it has no 'right' to eliminate near
a high ranking dog. This is often what starts puppies off if they
are kennelled with an adult dog.
Puppies that are punished for emptying themselves in the house will
often start to eat their own muck as well. Once a dog has started this
it may even seek out other dog's muck on walks or, if you are really lucky,
extend the remit to fox and badger scats.
Manufactured dog food contains a powerful additive to make the food
palatable and the smell and taste of this additive remains appealing in
the faeces so dogs that do not eat their own muck might well be eager to
pick up that from other dogs when they are out.
Dogs fed a raw food diet that includes raw meaty bones are less likely
to respond to this attraction because they are already receiving the
best nutrition in a form that takes them a while to eat, with plenty
of hard chewing.
Food that is gobbled up in seconds tends to leave a dog looking for
something else to eat because its chewing needs have not been satisfied.
A useful tip is to add sulphur blocks to the dog's water. Water
bowls should be ceramic or glass, plastic or metal leaches impurities into
the water and metal bowls will react with certain substances, and the block
can be left in untill the behaviour is cured, which should not take long
if it is nutrition-based rather than social in origin.
Sulphur blocks for dogs will need to be scrubbed clean on a regular
basis.
Training
Training by itself will rarely solve the problem as a dog can scent
an appealing pile long before you will see it and call the dog, but training
in conjuction with a change in feed and cleaning practices will often
work.
Excerse the dog in open areas where you can see it start to home
in on one of these special savoury snacks and call the dog back to reward
it with something high in value in taste terms, such as cheese or dried
liver.
Vigorous deterrents such as training discs, long lines or water sprays
are far more effective if the right behaviour is the given positive reward
as well.
Lurcher owners are lucky in that few lurchers are as food driven
as some breeds. Breaking a Labrador or Terrier of coprophagia is
indeed a chalenge in comparison.
We need to be aware
But many of us keep more than one type of dog so we need to be aware
of what can happen. The best way is to arrange your management so
that the opportunity for coprophagia never arises but in dogs that have
formed the habit, parrticularly when under stress such as in a previous
bad home or a rescue kennel environment, they may come to you difficult
or maybe impossible to cure.
That being the case, all you can do is try to keep the chance of
muck eating to a minimum and if you fail don rubber gloves, rub tomato
ketchup all over the offending muzzle, rinse off with plenty of water,
and don't let the dog lick your face!
Jackie Drakeford
reprinted with kind permission from
David Venner. Editor. The Countryman’s Weekly
www.countrymansweekly.com
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