Dog eating own faeces :(

Bendihorse

Our beagle is roughly five months old. He lives indoors with us and has his own room where he sleeps at night. We have a flat roof where we asks to go out to when he nees to poop. Its cleaned once a day, sometimes every two days. When he gets out if he is not taken in straight away after pooping he starts to eat any poops that are left from earlier visits.

This has now developed further to the point where today, he pooped then ate it as soon as it was on the ground.

He is fed three times a day on a good quality food recommended by his vet (Not science plan, the name escapes me right now tho) He also gets 'scraps' from our dinner. He is extreamly greedy for food all of time time, even after feeds but i think that is just because of his breed.

He is properly wormed and vaccinated up to date as per the vets instructions.

What might be causing this and how on earth can we stop him?

anniehoo

The term is called "Coprophagia" and is a very common thing in dogs.
Link (straight from wiki) but there are loads of articles if you google that term.

wrote:

Coprophagia is a behavior often observed in dogs. Hofmeister, Cumming, and Dhein (2001) wrote that this behavior in dogs has not been well-researched and prepared a study.[2] In a preliminary paper, they write that there are various hypotheses for this behavior in canines, although none have been proven:

• Dogs are, by nature, scavengers, and this might be within the range of scavenger behavior.
• Dogs might want attention from their caretakers.
• They might have anxiety or stress.
• To clean up in crowded surroundings
• They had been punished for having defecated in the past, and attempt to clean up out of fear of being punished again.
• They may be trying to prevent the scent from attracting predators.
• The texture and temperature of fresh feces approximates that of regurgitated food, which is how mothers in the wild provide solid food to their pups.
• Feces (particularly cat feces) contain protein; overfeeding can also increase the quantity of undigested matter in the feces.
• The coprophagia may be due to assorted health problems, including:
  • Pancreatitis
  • Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency
  • Intestinal infections
  • Food allergies, leading to malabsorption
• The dogs might be hungry, such as when eating routines are changed, food is withheld, or nutrients are not properly absorbed.
• Carnivores may sometimes eat or roll in the feces of their prey to ingest and exude scents that mask their own.

Another hypothesis is that dogs want to investigate the diet of their opponents and get more acquainted with their smell.
Some veterinarians recommend adding meat tenderizer to dog food, as this makes the feces taste excessively bad to dogs. Several companies produce food additives that can also be added to the animal's food to make feces taste bad. Often, these food additives will contain Capsicum Oleoresin, which gives off a repugnant odor making the fecal matter undesirable to the dog.

Kieron854

young pups do this to mimic their dam (mother) she will eat the litters poo
to keep the den or whelping area clean the first thing is to clean up as soon as posible but dont let him see you doing this.if it continues get a water pistol and squirt his face every time you see him about to do this .the good news is it wont harm himit just looks nasty

dahat

ad pineapple juice to his food which will give an acidic taste to the poo...........not long after this they wont eat it anymore.

suziwalsh

You can also give him some courgette that works as well and also there is a new product called stool off which is a tablet you can get in most pet shops works well.

APrender

We have a Beagle mix pup (female, nearly 3 months old) who has a habit of eating her faeces (especially at night time). From reading up on it there are several reasons touted as to why dogs eat their own waste; because there are so many reasons analysts either cannot determine conclusively why they do it, or else the reasons given are each a cause for dogs to do it. Either way much "advice" is not really helpful.

When she defecates in the day she generally does not eat her waste (but sometimes she does). At night time we put her out in a shed, which is comfortable and warm. She usually has about 10 hours in the shed until she's let out the next morning. She on average defecates four times and eats at least one of them. (Last night she went five times and ate four of them!) She is not over or under fed; she gets only high quality dog nuts and slim, chewy sticks during the day. We've tried to vary her diet timewise but it hasn't altered her behaviour. We've tried a powder to add to her food, called Copro-Nil; we've added it to her food for a few days now but it hasn't made a difference (yet).

I'm also concerned that she goes several times in the night, instead of say once or twice at most. She is generally fed in the morning, at noon and then around 5pm. Her daily amount is split up into three servings. Would it be best to get her down to two square meals a day? She defectation during the day seems normal. I guess she will go less as she matures. But I need to nip this faeces eating habit in the bud. Because she does it at night time it is hard to dissaude her for from doing it.

We haven't tried the pineapple juice with her yet but will try it next (thanks!)

andreac

Sounds like you dog is anxious, hence the amount of times its going to the toilet so often.
Why are you putting a 3 month old pup out in a shed for ten hours??

For starters a pup cant hold going to the toilet for longer than a couple of hours, so ten hours is far too long to leave it until you let it out to the toilet.

What food is your pup on? It could be going more often due to low quality food.

DBB

andreac wrote: »

Sounds like you dog is anxious, hence the amount of times its going to the toilet so often.
Why are you putting a 3 month old pup out in a shed for ten hours??

For starters a pup cant hold going to the toilet for longer than a couple of hours, so ten hours is far too long to leave it until you let it out to the toilet.

What food is your pup on? It could be going more often due to low quality food.

I'd agree with Andrea, that whilst the coprophagia is a worry, you've got perhaps a bigger underlying problem of her pooping up to 4 times a night or more. This is an extraordinarily large amount of pooping, considering she's also going during the day.
This amount of defaecating is indicative of stress, and it's entirely possible she's also eating her faeces out of stress. The fact that both problems occur at night when she is isolated strongly suggests that the stress and consequent behaviours are associated with loneliness, fear and anxiety at being left alone.
10 hours is way too long to leave such a young pup alone for, to be honest. The fact that the shed is warm and dry is scant consolation to a dog who's feeling lonely.
Is she indoors during the day? Would you consider bringing her indoors to sleep at night, with judicious use of a crate to housetrain her?

APrender

andreac wrote: »

Sounds like you dog is anxious, hence the amount of times its going to the toilet so often.
Why are you putting a 3 month old pup out in a shed for ten hours??

For starters a pup cant hold going to the toilet for longer than a couple of hours, so ten hours is far too long to leave it until you let it out to the toilet.

What food is your pup on? It could be going more often due to low quality food.

We had her on Real Nature dog nuts; quite expensive and she liked it a lot. Have changed to Pedigree at present.

She gets roughly 10 hours in the shed over night. But over last few nights I've kept her up longer, till near 12am.

APrender

DBB wrote: »

I'd agree with Andrea, that whilst the coprophagia is a worry, you've got perhaps a bigger underlying problem of her pooping up to 4 times a night or more. This is an extraordinarily large amount of pooping, considering she's also going during the day.
This amount of defaecating is indicative of stress, and it's entirely possible she's also eating her faeces out of stress. The fact that both problems occur at night when she is isolated strongly suggests that the stress and consequent behaviours are associated with loneliness, fear and anxiety at being left alone.
10 hours is way too long to leave such a young pup alone for, to be honest. The fact that the shed is warm and dry is scant consolation to a dog who's feeling lonely.
Is she indoors during the day? Would you consider bringing her indoors to sleep at night, with judicious use of a crate to housetrain her?

Her coprophagia started around 10 days after we got her, so if it was loneliness (which it could be) it should have happened straight away. Also I've caught her doing it during the day as well, once in company. She had a bit of a cough not too long ago so we got her some antibiotics from the vet, which she was on for about 10 days. The problem started around the same time.

She has attention basically throughout the whole day and is in and out of the house the whole time so it could be stressing for her to be on her own at night. However we prefer to have her get used to sleeping in the shed. If the problem persists after trying the various suggestions we might try having her sleep in the kitchen.

DBB

APrender wrote: »

We had her on Real Nature dog nuts; quite expensive and she liked it a lot. Have changed to Pedigree at present.

She gets roughly 10 hours in the shed over night. But over last few nights I've kept her up longer, till near 12am.

As a matter of interest, has the problem changed for better or worse since the diet change?
I don't believe this has anything to do with diet though. If it was, she'd probably be doing it during the day too.
I'm afraid, OP, that if your pup is stressed about being alone in the shed, and everything you've told us points towards this as being the problem, it's not really going to matter one whit to her whether she's alone in there for 10 hrs or 8.
I think you're storing up a bigger potential problem in the future if you don't address the root of this problem now.
Can I ask, is she allowed into the house during the day?

andreac

To be honest, Pedigree is pure crap, a very bad quality food which i wouldnt recommend feeding to a pup. Its not made up with any good ingredients so i highly recommend you change to something a bit better.

Regarding the shed, i think its very unfair to leave a 3 month old pup outside in a shed over night, it must be so lonely and scary out there for a little baby puppy, hence the anxious behaviour. Could you not have the pup sleep indoors at night, even in a crate? I really think its very unfair to put any pup that young outside to sleep for so long on its own:(