I have a poop eater on my hands!!!

mhvonalmen8908 · 02-11-2011, 03:10 PM

Ok. Virga eats Doppler's poop. It's gross but it is what it is. I think we've narrowed it down to she's missing some Vitamin B. She'll only eat his. We thought at first that she was doing it to clean up the yard but we've gotten in the habit now of cleaning the yard up every day so we know it's not that. Maybe she's mimicking me? But I doubt that. She's also not in a confined area everyday and she gets plenty of exercise. She could probably use more and since the weather is getting nicer we're going to start taking them to the dog park tomorrow!!! Yay! But back to the poop eating. Neither of them have worms either. So she's not losing any nutrients from intestinal parasites. Like I said, I've pretty much narrowed it down to a Vitamin B deficiency based on my Googling 'poop eating'.

My question is, has anyone else experienced this gross habit and what did they do to help stop it? Also, did you change the food, add supplements, feed more, feed less? I'm at a loss right now. Any help would be appreciated.

Leonard's MOM · 02-11-2011, 03:57 PM

We have had bassets that did this and our vet told us to give Dis-Taste supplement which is available through Drs. foster & Smith. The description says it makes stools "unpalatable" LOL you would think that was the case all the time. We used to have one that would actually run over to the other to get a nice steaming mouthful. After giving each a tablet daily they quit doing it so I guess it actually works.

AmyB · 02-11-2011, 04:07 PM

Good luck with that.

Spencer was a poop eater on & off his whole life. When he was young, it was constant. All the commercial remedies failed to work. His vet recommended sprinkling the poop with hot sauce & letting him eat it. That didn't work either. I ended up just being a freak about cleaning up. I would follow him & Sadie outside & clean up immediately. As he aged, he did it less & he often would go for long spells without doing it. It didn't seem to make any sense. His vet told me that as gross as it was, it really wasn't dangerous, unless he was eating the poop of strange dogs who might be infected with worms or some other disease.

Mikey T · 02-11-2011, 04:39 PM

Quote:

tomorrow!!! Yay! But back to the poop eating. Neither of them have worms either. So she's not losing any nutrients from intestinal parasites. Like I said, I've pretty much narrowed it down to a Vitamin B deficiency based on my Googling 'poop eating'.

Very unlikely

Deterents like tobasco, distaste and meat tenderizer in studies are miminally successfull. The only truely successfull technique is to clean up immeadiately after the dog.

Why Do Dogs Eat Poop?

Now if you would like the real reason dogs do this they have over a 17,000 year history of doing so, see
How Wolves became Dogs

Quote:

Jonica Newby: For a long time scientists believed our nurturing instinct was enough to explain the relationship. We created dogs for our purposes. Man tamed the wolf - as a pet. But one outspoken professor of evolutionary biology thinks the pet theory of domestication is all just a fairy story.
Prof. Raymond Coppinger: How does it work where you go out and you bring a puppy back to the village and you make a pet out of it? And then what happens? A miracle happens, fairy godmother comes and turns it into a dog. How does it turn into a dog?

...
Jonica: it seems to me pretty reasonable that they go out and get pets. You know they go and get wolf cubs and so on. What’s wrong with that idea of domestication?
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sanserif]Prof. Raymond Coppinger: Well first of all wolves are just trained to run away from you. I mean they’re going to hide their little … isn’t this a much better model. You develop a better mousetrap. You develop a village. You get food in the village. Guess who comes? All right. Now you want to postulate some great scene where I’ve got to go out into the wilderness to get those things. Which one looks, which one looks easier to you? Far from we humans domesticating them, dogs invaded us. Not as pets, but as pests.
.. it’s the rules of natural selection. It’s Darwinism if you will. They’re coming to the food. They’re coming to the waste products and the thing about humans is that there’s tremendous numbers of waste products. Scavenging on village wastes was a wonderful strategy for the early wolf-dog - and maybe they weren't such a complete nuisance after all. Rubbish dumps breed disease. A mobile post-pleistocene garbage service might have come in handy. And it could help explain the dog's least endearing habit. Eating shit.

studies on deterents like distaste and meat tenderizer show them to be only minimially effective. The only sure way is to clean up imeadiately after the dog goes.

Why Do Dogs Eat Poop?

Coprophagia

Quote:

Here's more than you probably want to know about coprophagia.

1) In the short-term, if a dog is eating its own feces, coprophagia is both a normal and common canine behavior, and a harmless one. If the dog is ingesting the feces of other dogs or animals, it may run the risk of picking up a parasite or virus from the "donor." However, if the coprophagia is occurring among your own animals, there is little danger as long as you are keeping them healthy and providing the necessary vaccinations and heart worm medication. (The one exception may be young puppies that have not yet gained full immunity from parvo through vaccinations.) In the majority of cases, the behavior eventually stops on its own after a number of weeks or months. It is most commonly seen in pups between 4-9 months of age, who will most

...A) Everyone and her brother has a magic food ingredient that supposedly will prevent coprophagia, from pineapple to spinach to pickles--including all the commercial additives. Although some of these "supplements" seem to work for particular dogs, there is no certainty or guarantee that they will work for your dog. Statistically, most of the time food additives fail to stop the behavior. A behavioral reason for this, which the members of this list can appreciate, is that eating the feces is simply more reinforcing than the "nasty taste" is punishing. There is also a possible physiological reason for the failure of food additives. Dogs have survived is by developing a tolerance for what we would consider nasty tastes. As Nancy points out, dogs are scavengers and opportunists. (See the Coppingers' book, "Dogs," and their village dump theory.) Some studies suggest that dogs that engage in coprophagia, especially long-term, have an even more forgiving sense of taste than the average dog.

...) Although it was once thought that dietary deficiencies were a cause of coprophagia, most studies to date fail to show a clear or consistent correspondence between dietary deficiency and the unwanted behavior. Some dogs with nutritional deficiencies have ceased being coprophagic after their diet was improved, but as with the nasty tasting food additives, no particular nutrient seems to help all coprophagic dogs, and a majority of coprophagic dogs have no measurable deficiency. When a deficiency is associated with the behavior, it has most often turned out to be thiamin or one of a few trace minerals. So supplementation with a B-vitamin complex rich in thiamin may help some dogs. The link here is still tentative, though, because in a number of studies dogs that were deprived of nutrients did not become coprophagic. So while some coprophagic dogs have a nutritional deficiency, all dogs with deficiencies do not become coprophagic, and all dogs that are coprophagic do not have a nutritional deficiency.

Lightning&Stomps · 02-11-2011, 07:18 PM

Lightning eats poop because he thinks he's hungry. It's pretty obvious. I've used Dis-Taste, and I think it worked, but you have to give more than the recommended dosage, so it can get expensive. And as soon as I run out of the Dis-Taste, he goes back to eating poop. It's disgusting, but not abnormal and so far (knock on wood) hasn't caused him any physical harm.

Annie714 · 02-11-2011, 07:30 PM

Sheesh...and I felt gross when I saw Annie licking her own pee! I still don't know why she does it. She is spayed so it's not a hormonal thing. She gets plenty of fresh water, so she's not thirsty. And she doesn't do it all the time, I've only seen her do it after the first pee of the morning...and again, not every time.

Dogs do weird things. Today I caught her rubbing her face in a fern?! This was about 30 mins after I wiped her face clean with a wet rag. In fact...I took a picture! The first is the face rubbing, the second shows when she notices that I'm spying on her LOL.

bklantz · 02-11-2011, 10:00 PM

Ella is OBSESSED with eating poop...she will eat any poop she can get to. At the dog park she will sprint over to any dog she sees squatting...even if the dog is just peeing she has to make sure she isn't missing out on poop

We have tried pretty much everything and nothing has worked...we have tried the pills, meat tenderizer, pumpkin, pineapple, switched food several times, and attempting to teach her 'leave it'

the only thing that works for us is to get to the poop before her...

I don't mean this to be discouraging at all, the things I've tried I had heard worked on other dogs sooo I'm pretty sure Ella is just a psycho or something.

I would suggest any of the things I tried, it's worth a shot

roscolaylamommy · 02-12-2011, 01:05 AM

We've recently discovered that Rosco has been doing this as well. Although he's eating frozen poo. I've looked at several articles and it could be just about anything. In our case I wonder if the food we're feeding them isn't high quality enough and it's coming out with a similar smell and texture as their food. They also said it could be a submissive dog behavior. Apparently eating the other dog's poop is a sign that they are acknowledging the other dog superior status.

Rosco is also a cat poop eater. There have been many times we've had to chase him away from the "kitty candy bars." I've had other friends with bassets that exhibit similar issues.

In our case, I'm hoping going back to a higher quality dog food will stop Rosco from eating poop as he didn't eat dog poop prior to switching dog food.

For now I will be forgoing any dog kisses until they invent doggy Listerine!

Princess Buttercup · 02-12-2011, 02:58 AM

PB loves kitty roca! I was intrigued by the submissive behavior comment because she runs away from the neighbor cat. I do admit I get a little peeved when she snacks on it, mainly because I pick up her poop!! Who picks up cat poop? Grrr!

JAKEELVIS · 02-12-2011, 09:48 AM

Toby started suddenly started eating poop about 4 months after he came to live here. OMG the breathe YUCK. He only seems to do it in the evening at his time out before bed time. I started leashing him and taking him out. A pain but worth it. Its been too cold to go out and pick up poop.

Its also messing up his pill taking. He is to take his pill one hour before or two hours after eating....including poop. So I have to plan ahead.

02-11-2011, 03:10 PM	#1 (permalink)
mhvonalmen8908 Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Las Vegas, NV Posts: 761	I have a poop eater on my hands!!! Ok. Virga eats Doppler's poop. It's gross but it is what it is. I think we've narrowed it down to she's missing some Vitamin B. She'll only eat his. We thought at first that she was doing it to clean up the yard but we've gotten in the habit now of cleaning the yard up every day so we know it's not that. Maybe she's mimicking me? But I doubt that. She's also not in a confined area everyday and she gets plenty of exercise. She could probably use more and since the weather is getting nicer we're going to start taking them to the dog park tomorrow!!! Yay! But back to the poop eating. Neither of them have worms either. So she's not losing any nutrients from intestinal parasites. Like I said, I've pretty much narrowed it down to a Vitamin B deficiency based on my Googling 'poop eating'. My question is, has anyone else experienced this gross habit and what did they do to help stop it? Also, did you change the food, add supplements, feed more, feed less? I'm at a loss right now. Any help would be appreciated.

02-11-2011, 04:07 PM	#3 (permalink)
AmyB Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio Posts: 1,865	Good luck with that. Spencer was a poop eater on & off his whole life. When he was young, it was constant. All the commercial remedies failed to work. His vet recommended sprinkling the poop with hot sauce & letting him eat it. That didn't work either. I ended up just being a freak about cleaning up. I would follow him & Sadie outside & clean up immediately. As he aged, he did it less & he often would go for long spells without doing it. It didn't seem to make any sense. His vet told me that as gross as it was, it really wasn't dangerous, unless he was eating the poop of strange dogs who might be infected with worms or some other disease. __________________ Amy, mom to Sadie (ATB, 6/9/06) & Spencer (ATB, 8/19/10) - always in my heart and Clifford (gotcha date 7/2/11).

02-11-2011, 07:30 PM	#6 (permalink)
Annie714 Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Huntington Beach, CA Posts: 1,218	Sheesh...and I felt gross when I saw Annie licking her own pee! I still don't know why she does it. She is spayed so it's not a hormonal thing. She gets plenty of fresh water, so she's not thirsty. And she doesn't do it all the time, I've only seen her do it after the first pee of the morning...and again, not every time. Dogs do weird things. Today I caught her rubbing her face in a fern?! This was about 30 mins after I wiped her face clean with a wet rag. In fact...I took a picture! The first is the face rubbing, the second shows when she notices that I'm spying on her LOL. __________________ Blog about the antics of Annie and I. http://thechickandthehound.blogspot.com Last edited by Annie714; 11-27-2011 at 12:38 AM.

02-11-2011, 03:57 PM	#2 (permalink)
Leonard's MOM Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Posts: 6	We have had bassets that did this and our vet told us to give Dis-Taste supplement which is available through Drs. foster & Smith. The description says it makes stools "unpalatable" LOL you would think that was the case all the time. We used to have one that would actually run over to the other to get a nice steaming mouthful. After giving each a tablet daily they quit doing it so I guess it actually works.

02-11-2011, 07:18 PM	#5 (permalink)
Lightning&Stomps Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Versailles, Ky. Posts: 1,271	Lightning eats poop because he thinks he's hungry. It's pretty obvious. I've used Dis-Taste, and I think it worked, but you have to give more than the recommended dosage, so it can get expensive. And as soon as I run out of the Dis-Taste, he goes back to eating poop. It's disgusting, but not abnormal and so far (knock on wood) hasn't caused him any physical harm.

02-11-2011, 10:00 PM	#7 (permalink)
bklantz Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Iowa Posts: 103	Ella is OBSESSED with eating poop...she will eat any poop she can get to. At the dog park she will sprint over to any dog she sees squatting...even if the dog is just peeing she has to make sure she isn't missing out on poop We have tried pretty much everything and nothing has worked...we have tried the pills, meat tenderizer, pumpkin, pineapple, switched food several times, and attempting to teach her 'leave it' the only thing that works for us is to get to the poop before her... I don't mean this to be discouraging at all, the things I've tried I had heard worked on other dogs sooo I'm pretty sure Ella is just a psycho or something. I would suggest any of the things I tried, it's worth a shot

02-12-2011, 01:05 AM	#8 (permalink)
roscolaylamommy Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Columbia, MO Posts: 604	We've recently discovered that Rosco has been doing this as well. Although he's eating frozen poo. I've looked at several articles and it could be just about anything. In our case I wonder if the food we're feeding them isn't high quality enough and it's coming out with a similar smell and texture as their food. They also said it could be a submissive dog behavior. Apparently eating the other dog's poop is a sign that they are acknowledging the other dog superior status. Rosco is also a cat poop eater. There have been many times we've had to chase him away from the "kitty candy bars." I've had other friends with bassets that exhibit similar issues. In our case, I'm hoping going back to a higher quality dog food will stop Rosco from eating poop as he didn't eat dog poop prior to switching dog food. For now I will be forgoing any dog kisses until they invent doggy Listerine!

02-12-2011, 02:58 AM	#9 (permalink)
Princess Buttercup Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Oregon Posts: 576	PB loves kitty roca! I was intrigued by the submissive behavior comment because she runs away from the neighbor cat. I do admit I get a little peeved when she snacks on it, mainly because I pick up her poop!! Who picks up cat poop? Grrr!

02-12-2011, 09:48 AM	#10 (permalink)
JAKEELVIS Member Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 31	Toby started suddenly started eating poop about 4 months after he came to live here. OMG the breathe YUCK. He only seems to do it in the evening at his time out before bed time. I started leashing him and taking him out. A pain but worth it. Its been too cold to go out and pick up poop. Its also messing up his pill taking. He is to take his pill one hour before or two hours after eating....including poop. So I have to plan ahead.

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