"Personal Snacking"
Hi All,
My 4 month old pup, Jerry is a repeat offender in the "personal snacking" (as I call it) department. He eats his own poop. Not all the time, not anyone else's poop, but he does do it often.
I can see a method to this madness. He only eats it when he goes in his crate or in his x-pen (or I suppose he'd do it if he was loose in the house and had an accident). I'm assuming he's trying to clean his space and I get it...but UGH. No!
I'm not really sure what I can do about it at this point, as we're still working on potty training. I praise the heck out of him when he goes outside and also when he "leaves it" and walks away when he's done. I've read articles that say putting things on their food like meat tenderizer makes it smell differently and they won't eat it, but that just sounds strange. I've also heard that pumpkin helps, but he eats a bit of pumpkin almost every morning in his kong and I've seen no improvement.
I suppose an issue could be that he's having accidents to begin with. I don't really know what to say to that. He has a pretty regular poop schedule, or at least I make sure he does to try and avoid this problem. Sometimes he gets distracted when he's going and doesn't drop it all. Then when he's antsy or bored in his crate (mostly on car rides or at night) he'll drop the rest. When I'm driving on the freeway, I can't really stop the car and take him out and correct the behavior and when we're gone and he does it, we don't see evidence until we come back. (I was on the phone in the car the other day when it happened. Had to explain why I was saying, "No Jerry! No!" Gross, lol)
I'm not really worried about the nutrition factor, I'm mostly just trying to figure out what actions I can take to improve the behavior. Does anyone else have this problem? I'd appreciate your feedback if you've dealt with it before. Maybe he'll grow out of it, but he's 4 months now and moving quickly into adolescence. (Oh the puppy attitude...) Thanks for your help!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Anya Q. on
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I would like to see what replies come back for this post because Max like his poop too!
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Permalink Reply by Vicky Hay on
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A vet once told me to sprinkle a little MSG on the dog's food. It's essentially flavorless to the dog, but when metabolized it spoils the delicious flavor of the you-no-what. Yes, MSG is meat tenderizer.
The Gershep would do this when she was a pup. So oookaaayyy...I tried the MSG. Worked like a charm. And you don't have to keep it up for long: as soon as you break the habit, the dog probably will stop the personal snacking. As I recall, I used the MSG for just a few days, maybe a week or so.
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Permalink Reply by Marina Holshevnikoff on
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I didn't make the MSG > Meat tenderizer connection before. For some reason I was thinking it was a liquid, lol. That makes sense, and I'm glad to hear that it didn't take very long. Thanks for speaking to that suggestion!
I'm also so glad to know that I'm not the only one with this problem! Even though it's yucky, haha!
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Permalink Reply by Susan Marie Kovalinsky on
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Mine began doing this at 4 months, and she still does it at 11 months! It is very common, and not an indication of any kind of trouble. I was told giving pineapple helps, as the enzymes make the poop less attractive!
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I LOVE pineapple. I would be happy to share with my dog. :) Thanks for that suggestion!
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Most welcome :-)
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Permalink Reply by Linda on
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Hmmm.....I'll have to give that one a try but since Katie is 10 years old I'm not sure it will stop her. I've tried other stuff supposedly just for that but they never worked.
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Permalink Reply by Denis J. on
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MSG wouldn't work with a dog eating others' poo out there. That's Wally's problem, sneaking a quick bite at frozen poo. Not all of them but I do see it in his eye and body language when he smells one with something appealing to him.
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That's true. Anna the GerShep liked horse piles. No...LOVED them. Weird!
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Permalink Reply by Jane on
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Have you ever yelled at him after the fact when you found an accident? Sometimes dogs eat their own poop to "get rid of the evidence" so to speak if they don't understand why their owner is upset.
My cardi has eaten his own poo on occasion and honestly nothing worked better than following him out and sternly correcting the behavior. I'm honestly not sure how you'd correct it in a crate...maybe try an xpen with some newspaper down so he can move away from it easier? Sorry that doesn't help with the car rides.
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Thanks everyone. For some reason, this weekend, Jerry's "output" increased frequency and we've had a lot of snacking incidents. Yuck. I guess he's growing or something.
The good news is, he LOVES pineapple! The bad news is...it hasn't worked yet, lol.
Will keep trying. Until then, potty breaks all the time!
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