Our new puppy is eating her poop, and a friend said
that is because we feed kibble. We don’t want to make a home-made cooked or
raw diet for our dog, so what can we do to stop this awful habit?
Disgusted in Dayton
Dear Disgusted,
We have
fed raw for more than nine years. All of our dogs, with the exception of Hannah
(13 years) have been weaned to raw, and all are in outstanding health.
We
have had several poop eaters. They all outgrew the habit.
Since it is a
natural thing for females to eat the poop of their puppies, and since dogs will
eat cat poop from the litter box and other goodies like horse droppings when you
are out hiking with them, I do not think that it is peculiar to kibble-fed dogs.
In all the years that I or my family of origin fed kibble (nearly 50) to a lot
of dogs, I only saw two dogs eat poop, a Boston Terrier when I was a teenager
and a Shi'tzu that lived nearly 20 years.
I think if people understand
that this, like sniffing crotches, rolling in foul smelling stuff, and licking
anuses, is normal canine behavior, they can be more relaxed about it when it
happens. I have found that ignoring the behavior or just showing disgust when I
smell it on their breath seems to work. When I freaked out with that Shi'tzu, I
think she thought I liked it, and the habit continued for three or four years.
Over the last 10 years, I have seen it occasionally in puppies, and they have
outgrown it (or they do it in private). I have not smelled poop on any of our
adult dogs in the past 10 years.
The vet for the Shi’tzu back in 1990
told me that 50 percent of all dogs eat poop. There are many products on the
market that are supposed to stop dogs from eating poop. There are old remedies
like feeding them figs and other things to stop the habit. None of these things
work immediately. My opinion? It stops when the dog is ready to stop regardless
of whether you use a product or a food to encourage it to stop.
So relax;
don’t make a big deal of it; and I suspect it will stop, maybe not as quickly as
you would like, but soon enough that you will forget she ever did it.
Jubilee