By Sally Bradbury
Poo eating, or coprophagia to use the scientific term, is normal. Undesirable, but nonetheless something that some dogs and many other species do.
There are various reasons why a dog may do this; learned from mum in the nest, hungry, undigested food present in the poo, habit, hiding the evidence if punished during toilet training, and many more.
Prevention is always the best policy. Pick up as soon as they go, especially if you have more than one dog. If it’s other dog’s poo, or the poo of any animal they are attracted to out and about, then a solid recall and a reliable ‘leave’ must be taught before letting your dog off lead.
If your dog is in the habit of watching your other dog(s) poo and diving for it, then the answer is to take them out separately for now. If he likes to poo and turn straight around to snack on it, then you can teach a positive interrupter. This is just a word or a noise that you pair with a high-value reward. It needs to be a happy sound so something like ‘yay!’, said in a cheery voice. Grab a few really yummy treats and with no distractions say ‘yay!’ and immediately give him a treat. Repeat this about ten times then wait for him to turn away from you, try the ‘yay!’ and he should turn to you for a treat. Then take him out on a lead and harness and as soon as he poos give him a ‘yay!’ as you gently move him away from the poo. Throw a few more treats on the ground for him so you can move in and remove the poo while he eats the treats. After a few sessions, he should reliably look to you for a treat after pooing and forget about snacking on the poo.
If you have a clicker trained dog, then the following method works well and has the added bonus of turning a poo eating dog into a poo finding dog:
- Clear the yard/garden except for one poo
- Have some very high-value treats, your clicker, and your dog
- As soon as your dog looks at/sniffs the poo, click
- If your dog is clicker savvy, they should turn to you for the treat and then spend the next ten minutes going through their repertoire trying to figure out what they did to get that click and treat
- Then they’ll give up and go back to their favourite pastime of eating poo. If the dog looks at the poo or their head goes down to, it click & treat
Depending on how good your timing is and how experienced your dog is, it should take between three and ten repetitions for the lightbulb moment; for the dog to ‘get it’ and know what they did to get the click & treat. Then you can put it on cue. ‘Where’s the poo?’ Dog finds and looks at the poo, gets a click, leaves the poo, and comes to you for the treat. This is useful when you are out with your dogs and one of them poos in the long grass some distance away. You can use your trained poo finding dog!