How To Stop Your Dogs' Poop Eating Habit

It’s hard to imagine a more revolting sight than seeing your beloved pet hungrily devour another dogs’ poop in the dog park for the first time. For many dog owners, it can be a very unpleasant and upsetting experience, and leaves them with a problem which they urgently need to resolve …

How do you stop your dog's poop eating habit?

The good news is that dogs will carry out poop eating for a fairly limited number of reasons, and if you can work out why they are doing it, you stand a very good chance of being able to stop your dogs' poop eating habit forever.

Often, dogs will resort to poop eating (the correct term for this behavior is coprophagia) because they are being fed on a diet which is nutritionally deficient. Dogs do not find the smell of feces repellant in the way that humans do. In fact, a dogs’ sense of smell will detect that there is still some nutritional value left in the feces, and so if his nutritional needs are not being met by the food which he is getting at home, he will be tempted to eat the feces as a way to make up for the shortfall.

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If you are trying to break your dogs' poop eating behaviour for the above reason, it is strongly recommended that you switch to a high quality dry food which is endorsed and available through you local veterinary practice. Whilst it may seem a little expensive to begin with, you will find that you will use less per feed. The reason for this is that very often tinned food from the supermarket has been bulked out with ‘nutritionally valueless’ ingredients. This means that a dog may consume more, but get less benefit than if he was being fed on a smaller portion of high quality dry food.

If a dog has been scolded in the past for pooping in the house, he may resort to the unpleasant habit of poop eating as a means of hiding the evidence, thus avoiding a further scolding when he repeats the behavior. He may even start to eat his own poop outdoors if he has developed a fear of the consequences of pooping from these previous scoldings.

For this reason, you should never punish your dog for pooping in the house. If you catch him as he is about do do it, tell him firmly “No”, then take him outside to an area where it is ok for him to do his business. Praise him when he does it in the correct place. Do this consistently, and he will naturally start to choose this area in future, which will help you to stop your dog poop eating as a means of ‘evidence hiding’.

If you see your dog poop eating, it is probably best to completely ignore him when he does it. Dogs love attention (even negative attention is better than no attention to some dogs) and so he may decide to repeat the behavior if finds it is an easy way of bringing your focus onto him.

If your dog is carrying out his unwanted behavior at home, you could try spraying his poop with a commercially available deterrant spray, or even by lacing it with paprika or cayenne pepper. This should serve to stop the dog poop eating as it is no longer appealing in smell, and hopefully will break the habit for the future as he begins to associate poop eating with an unpleasant consequence.

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