Ugh help!
5.5 month old golden. Attached to my senior golden at the hip. Has an affinity of getting all up in his business as he goes to the bathroom and snatching poop. Like…eww…
HELP!
Keep pup on a leash during potty breaks & pick up poop immediately.
It’s pretty normal but really a hard habit to break. My puppy does not but his littermate does; it’s hard to know what the trigger is/was.
Some vets say they will outgrow it, so in the meantime picking up asap is about all you can do. I often let my puppy out by himself (loose, in a fenced yard), not because he eats the other dogs’ poop but because he is distracted and won’t go. Then once he has gone (and/or every one has pooped), you could let them back out to play together.
From all I’ve found it’s basically a habit you’re unlikely to successfully break. Sometimes the feed-through stuff helps, often not. You can try to prevent access to the poop. But it seems like once they’re a confirmed poop eater, that’s just who they are.
Mine will turn right around and eat his own as soon as he’s deposited it, especially in the house. He also actively, earnestly hunts out all poop, any kind of poop - cat, chicken, coyote, deer, raccoon, absolutely any. It’s miserable.
Ugh.
So he only eats the fresh stuff right from the source. I am thinking of muzzling him. Its hard to know exactly when each has to go and we like to let them roam the fenced yard.
The easiest solution is to let the big on out to do his business, pick it up, then let them both out. But that is not always feasible.
Muzzle sounds like a great idea! May have to use it for a long time, break dog’s thinking track on poop eating.
My older dog started this as a puppy, never thought of using a muzzle. We were “told” by Vet care folks that he must be lacking something in diet or vitamins. He had been eating the other dog’s poop and his own. Blech!! So we got him vitamins and in time, he gave up the habit. The feed thru nasty stuff did not have any reduction in poop eating by him. He was on a good puppy and adult dog food. It was limited, since he was willing to eat until he made himself sick. Why do little dogs seem to think they are being starved?
I adopted a 5 year old dog who was a poop eater and I could never break that habit. But the good news is that my most recent puppy started eating poop. I diligently picked up all poop as soon as I could and fed both dogs the pills and after a few months, she stopped eating poop. She’s now almost 3 years old and no sign of poop eating.
But I have noticed that my 10 year old male dog eats her poop only when she’s in heat.
I’ve had luck with feeding Greek Yogurt to poop eaters.
Little dogs? Try having a lab who thought he was starving all the time!
Our lab would eat his own poop was well. But only his and only when he got older. I suspected he was missing something in his diet. I have read recently that its protein but who knows!
Very frustrating and I hope you can find a fairly simple solution. A muzzle just may work with your set up.
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Some dogs eat poop out of boredom or perceived hunger. I would think it might be more likely that he thought he was hungry even if he had just been fed.
My puppy was being fed Acana when we got him and I bought that for the first bag. His littermate did as well. She ate all the poop, he never did. I couldn’t find this feed very easily so I switched him to Purina Pro Plan puppy and that was all fine. Then I started thinking maybe I should be feeding a better food and bought Orijen puppy and started switching him to that – he immediately started eating his own poop.
So…I switched back to the Pro Plan and he never did it again. N=1…your experience might differ.
Meanwhile, his littermate, still a terrible poop eater. I might suggest to her owner that they might consider switching food, but I don’t think they would consider feeding Purina.
That said, I would downgrade food in some way rather than have a dog that ate feces every day.
Oh wow. Thats interesting about the feed change. We never changed our dogs food, it was odd that one day he just started and he never quit (perhaps about when he was 10 until 14 when he was put down). We had him on Blue Buffalo for perhaps the last 6 or so years of his life - the Sr brand.
Our new pup is not interested in her poop or any coyote poop as well thank goodness! She seems to be quite repulsed with either lol. But we feed her quite differently (raw) and not sure if thats the difference or not.
Mine was eating Diamond Puppy when I got him and I have him on Pro Plan Large Breed and he’s still a poop hound :sigh:
Mine was eating ProPlan and constantly eating dirt so switched to Diamond! Each pup is an individual. I swear by the Greek Yogurt. My dogs would just smash a muzzle into the poop!
Not poop but have known quite a few dogs who Love “rabbit dots”
Like M&M’s lol
Do I feed it to the pooper or the poop eater?
Feed it to both! I have one that eats his own and one that eats the other dog’s. I use Aldi vanilla non fat Greek yogurt. Start with a small amount since some dogs don’t tolerate dairy. The one who gets his poop eaten also gets a capsule of dried kelp which seems to help keep the poop eater away. (Dont ask why kelp seems to help. It’s a long story and may not help your dog).
The pooper has colitis so I need to be extra extra careful with him. He’s an 11 yo golden
Then I would just feed it to the poop eater. There is a school of thought that dogs eat dog poop because they are missing some essential gut bacteria. If that’s the case, the yogurt may help. (I think they eat horse, dear and rabbit poop because it tastes good to them).
Dr Pol ( sorry) had an episode where someones puppy was eating it’s littermates poop. There was something they could feed the other dog to make the poop unappetizing to the pup.
Might be worth looking into? Even if it was on Dr.Pol ( i love the show).
I read that too and that’s what I tried first - I bought doggy probiotics. Sadly did not help 
This was also a disappointment, they make it sound like these feed-through anti-copraphagic things really help but the reviews on them are overwhelmingly negative
The only other thing I’ve seen about it is that it’s some sort of instinct from way back when about cleaning up after themselves or something and those that do just…do.
I mean, by all means, try things, but I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with the dog or the food if, after having tried it all, it still just really likes 
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