coprophagia

Hi! I'm new to the forum and I hope you can help me with this problem. My husband and I adopted a 1 1/2 yr. old female golden retriever (spayed) from a rescue 3 weeks ago and she has the very disturbing habit of eating her own feces.

From what I've read on various web sites, this is much more disturbing to the owners than to the dog, who is of course mightily enyoying her "treat." Apparently there are various types of this behavior: dogs that eat only their own feces, dogs that eat other dogs' feces, dogs that eat the feces of other species. So far our little one has eaten only her own. Although we have seen other dogs' droppings on our walks, she doesn't show interest in them. Now for the really gross part. She doesn't eat it right after defecation ... she seems to like it best after it's had a day or so to "mature." Blech!

I try to stay with her when I let her out but she doesn't always poop right away, so then I'll go inside and let her stay out in the (fenced) yard. Also, my neighbor has been letting her out for me during the day, and I don't want to ask her, "Since you're being so nice and letting my dog out, would you mind also picking up her poop?" So most of the time I pick it up, but not always. Last night she ate a big pile of poop, later barfed it up and then had the runs.

I tried Deter and gave her the dosage recommended for her weight (7 tabs) but it gave her diarrhea. I then cut down to 3 tabs but she still had loose stools. Other products like ForBid seem to have a similar type of vegetable enzyme in them, so I'm afraid that she'd get diarrhea from them too.

I feed her 1 1/2 cups of Nutro Lamb & Rice 2 times a day, and she gets as "cookies" Nutro biscuits, Iams Lamb & Rice small biscuits and Milkbone small biscuits. No table scraps or people food. Any suggestions on how to break her of this?

Danna

A friend of mine has a 8 month old male black lab mix (neutered) that was eating both his feces and the cat's. She used Distaste, from Drs. Foster and Smith (www.peteducation.com) and had good results.

Hmmm ... I looked Distaste up on the Drs. F&S site and it seems to have the same active ingredient as Deter, and it gave her diarrhea. I think I'm going to give her food only for a few days then start out with one Deter tab and see if I can build up to the recommended dose. I've heard all these products work well if I can just keep the side effect at bay.

Thanks for your response!

Danna

Bella always eats the little rabbit "pellets" that she finds from the wild bunnies that visit our yard. There is absolutely no way I can keep her from them and they are so tiny that I can't even see them sometimes. All of my other dogs ate them too. :eek: I worry about picking up a disease or getting sick, but so far she's been fine. I am sorry I have no ideas for you Danna but dogs do eat the strangest things sometimes!!! Hope you can work something out.

Welcome, and congratulations on your rescue girl - we had a discussion on this topic a while ago that you might find helpful, see poop eater .

There is a link in Karen's link that is outdated but I found the right link to it: http://www.uwsp.edu/psych/dog/lib-prob.htm#copr

I read thru the suggestions a bit and it seems the best cure is prevention - seek and remove every pile of poop from the yard before she gets to it.

Since she is new and from a rescue perhaps it is due to anxiety and stress. Does she show other signs of anxiety like chewing on things and acting very submissive? Perhaps just training her in general will make her feel more comfortable with her position in her new home and over time she won't eat her poop. In the meantime just try to keep one step ahead of her in the yard :( .

Her notes from the rescue indicated that she ate poop occasionally, so it's not a new problem.

When we first brought her home she was submissive. She still is for the most part but she can get mouthy, which I correct immediately. I don't think she had obedience training but she performs sit and down pretty reliably. Inside she will come every time. Outside is a different story...she will come most of the time but sometimes she will look right at me then turn around and walk away, and stay is pretty much out of the question. I know I have to sign her up for obedience, but we are addressing another issue right now which is that she had hip surgery while at the rescue and we're trying to get her strength/stamina built up.

I've started to leash walk her in the yard every time she goes out so I can pick up after her. I hate having to do this since we have a nice big fenced yard, but there's just no other way. If I leave her alone, she eats it.

Off to check out that link now. Thanks!

Danna

ouch, hip surgery, sounds like she's been thru so much already...

I know how you feel about the fenced in yard. I thought I had a dog's dream yard, til I discovered Sadie was jumping the fence no problem. I tried explaining she could stay outside all day if she didn't leave the yard, she didn't listen. I used to just watch her from the back door and when she was ready to come in she would jump the fence and go to the front door. She didn't run away, she just sat and waited for me in the front. Weird.

Shelter dogs can have a lot of anxiety issues - my Sadie did for about 2 years (accidents in the house & chewing when left alone). This site gives great advice for behavior issues - I wish it existed when Sadie was young and before she realized I was easier to train than she was :( .

We also had a dog which ate her own poop when she was young. We didn't really do anything but keep it cleaned up and eventually she just outgrew it. I mean, there's hope that it won't be a lifelong problem.

he he. We used to say with our last golden that she had us trained very well. ;)

Hmmm, I hadn't really considered that our current dog might be having anxiety issues. The thing is, she was really very spoiled at the rescue. Because of the surgery she wasn't kenneled with the other dogs, she had her own room and everyone gave her lots of love & attention. I think she actually might be a little lonely here with no other dogs in the house, but most of my neighbors have dogs so I try to schedule playtime with them several days a week. Plus she gets walked twice a day and has swimming therapy twice a week.

One thing I have noticed is that she chews/eats her butt & tail hair and I've used Bitter Apple for that. Is that a sign of anxiety or maybe boredom? We've only had her a few weeks so we're still getting used to each other, and I know it will take time for both of us to adjust.

She's a real sweetie, but I really need to get a handle on the poop eating.

I think most dogs from a shelter, even if treated great, will have anxiety issues simply due to not having a stable home (this is all just my opinion, nothing expert here). My dog has always been fairly well behaved but her picky eating was upsetting me so I asked about that here and the advice I got helped me understand the world from her point of view. It's basically just advice on how to be a good pack leader, which helps the dog feel stable which then reduces anxiety...

these threads helped:

in need of advice
eating habits

Thanks for the links!