Can You Stop Your Dog Eating Poo?(Coprophagia)

This is a common complaint and very normal activity. That being said eating faeces can lead to various health problems and should be addressed. Eating human faeces is also normal and may have contributed to domestication but of course we find this even more disgusting and it comes with its own risks like if the local ‘bush excreter’ has consumed amphetamines this can be very dangerous to the dog who eats it.

However, despite many clinical trials no one method has proved 100% effective in solving this issue and ‘you can't ask a dog what not to do only what to do,’ so my advice is to follow the procedure of all training issues which is:

1.     Is your dog in good health? 

Coprophagia is sometimes associated with disease, so your dog should be given a veterinary examination to exclude a medical cause.

 Some dogs may be seeking (Thiamine) vitamin B1 from the faeces so therefore a diet supplemented with organ meat (heart and lung), rice bran, brewer’s yeast or a fish oil supplement could be considered.

2.     How can you manage this without training?

 Clean up the garden regularly. Avoid dog pens and overpopulated areas and keep on the move.

3.     Train an alternative response.

 You can't ask a dog what not to do only what to do but therefore you can't teach your dog to leave it on command which we will teach as part of your puppy foundation course.

4.     Eliminate reinforcement.

 At the end of the day a lot of dogs like the taste of faeces; if they have been eating their own you can try making them dislike the taste by feeding them things like pumpkin, pineapple juice, or anise extract which are all sulphur based which reports suggest make the faeces less attractive to dogs. In a similar way you could go and lace faeces outside with hot sauce or other deterrents, however in my humble opinion and my research into clinical trials these efforts are rarely effective especially since your dog already has a history of reinforcement from eating nice tasting faeces and you can’t lace all the faeces in all the parks you go to, so I wouldn’t bother.