Dog eating his own poo

RoryMurphyJnr wrote: »

We have a 2 year old male golden retriever who if he gets the chance will eat his own poo.

We make a point of cleaning it up as soon as he goes, but there's obviously sometimes when we're not around to do so.

Worried about not only the hygiene (small child in the house) but also for the dogs health.

Any ideas/tips/tricks we could try to get him to stop?

Thanks
R

Coprophagia's a perfectly natural behaviour for scavenging carnivores. When the diet isn't quite right, notably when it lacks Vitamin B or K (these are produced by bacteria in the back passage, when dogs are low on these vitamins, say when eating dry food!! as the vitamin content of dry food drops sharply from the moment of production to your dogs dinner bowl) they will ingest faeces that is coated in it, their own or more likely someone elses. Another reason is a lack of adequate protein so the dog sees faeces (especially high protein, nutritious faeces like human and fox) as a way of getting it in there.


Taken from my own stuff....

"......Another problem with large fetid masses [a result of dry food containing huge amounts of fibre, bulking the stool] is coprophagia, or poo eating. Dogs will eat poo for many reasons but today it boils down to two reasons – boredom/stress and nutrition of which the latter is most important. Dogs will naturally eat other animals poo (humans included) for nutritive reasons. Chronically underfed and malnourished individuals are seen to part take (Serpell 1995) more than well nourished counterparts. Butler and du Toit (2006) documented that dogs in Zimbabwe were fed a low protein diet by people in the village and when left to roam during the day human waste made up 20% of their diet.

Coprophagic dogs will rarely consume the stool of a carnivore / raw meat fed dog as it will have been more completely digested and what is left is of little nutritional value. There are many nutritional benefits to eating herbivore faeces. It is full of nutrients and vitamins from the healthy vegetarian diet. Symbiotic bacteria in the large intestines of animals produce important vitamins such as vitamin K, thiamine (B1), and riboflavin (B2) (Feldhammer 2007). Dogs fed a diet low in these specific nutrients may seek out faces to top up said nutrient levels. Furthermore these heaps will be high in protein, particularly in the case of human and cat faeces, and explaining the high incidence of coprophagia in Zimbabwean dogs fed "little by means of fresh protein".

As we have discussed dogs rapidly learn to associate food items with physiological consequences which results in a preference for that food item. This explains why coprophagia may appear as a “habit”. It is no more a habit than the eating of oranges by sailors to avoid scurvy. It is a necessity brought about by a mineral deficiency. Without published evidence I can only cite my professional experience that coprophagia is very rare in fresh, raw fed dogs. Many animals demonstrate nutrient specific hungers which evaporate when the animal is given a food loaded with that nutrient (Baker et al. (1987)). In this way poo can be quite tasty. Lacking the wealth of taste receptors that are normal in omnivores like humans, the dog might find it easier than us to perform such an act!

While appropriate diet can certainly reduce this issue to nil it must be remembered that coprophagia comes naturally to a dog, so don't stress, you're not a bad parent. Including pineapple / courgette in your dogs dinner will make the faeces unappealing while you go about discovering why your dog needs to eat so much faeces in the first place. Look first to low vitamin content food and foods of low (quantity and quality) protein as your lead causes."

Refs available on request.