No matter how disgusting we humans find it, dogs love eating poop. Puppies, in particular, are inclined to go about doing so. Usually, however, they will eventually grow out of it.
Another group that commonly eats poop are nursing mothers; their behavior, however, is quite understandable: They could not risk their puppies being found by predators, so they “cleaned up” after them.
Interestingly, there actually is a theory out there that suggests that men started domesticating dogs for the very purpose of eating poop – a different kind of waste management. But even if this were the case, today is a different age, and everyone wants to stop their dog from eating poop.
If your dog is eating poop, the first thing you want to do is have him checked out at the vet. Nutritional disorders can cause coprophagia (the medical term for poop eating), so you need to rule that out before trying to correct the behavior.
So the vet says your dog is fine, and now you want put a stop to the poop eating. Good… you have two options. The first one would be training your dog. For example, you could dedicate a certain area as the poop area. You would send your dog there every time he needs to do his business, and would not be allowed to go there any other time.
Another training routine is to teach your dog the “Leave It” command. The advantage of this command is that it is useful for many other situations besides poop eating.
If you do not want to go for training, you can try the second route, which could be considered chemical warfare – and I do not recommend it. The purpose here is to make the feces taste bad to the dog so he won’t eat it. Some likely products to use are hot sauce or crushed hot peppers.
However, this, too, can be a lot of work, because it will have to be applied to all feces that your dog has access to. So it may not even be practical. But the idea is simple: Over time your dog would come to the conclusion that feces do not taste good, and he will leave them alone.
Stopping your dog from eating poop can be difficult, but as with any behavioral training, patience and consistency will be rewarded.
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