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