I must ask this serious question :(

Can anyone enlighten me as to why my 4-5 yr old Male Pembroke Corgi eats his own bathroom habits? I have caught him several times, and he has even brought it into the house, what's up with this? I thought these dogs were intelligent, but mine, hmmmmmmmmmmm.....Any advise on this would be appreciated, and Thank You!

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Comment by Potus on November 21, 2010 at 5:31am
Hi, I don't have time to check if someone has already said this, but I saw on 'It's Me Or the Dog' that Victoria recommended feeding them pineapple, just a bit on top of their food. Apparently it makes their poop taste bad. Maybe try that??
Comment by Lisa and Izzie on November 20, 2010 at 8:44pm
one other thing that you could possibly try is pop a fish oil pill and sprinkle it on the food.....it will give a funny odor to the poo and they wont play in it or eat it. we did this for a while and izzie stopped playing with her poo.
Comment by Jeremy, Ashley, and Addy-Bell on November 20, 2010 at 8:40pm
According to www.dogfoodadvisor.com the food I feed Addy (Premium Edge, from Diamond) is a 4-star food, and on www.dogfoodanalysis.com the food is listed as reccomended (admittedly, by the one reviewer, the only reviewer thus far). Suffice to say it is a fairly good quality food with decent balanced nutition. It might be a little light on the fat content - but I'm SURE she has that made up for with other things we feed her...

My point is - she eats a very nutitional diet - and STILL eats poo.

I am partial to the theory that dogs find the smell of poo attractive (hence why they roll in it). They like poo, like we like the smell of flowers, spring rains, and clean laundry. And Corgis in particular. Although I am sure nutrient defficiencies can affect this - I really don't believe that coprophagy in dogs, and especially Corgis, is abnormal in any way - just really really nasty.

It's like us - we don't eat cake or ice-cream or cookies out of nutritional defficiencies - we eat them because we like them! Sometimes we eat them even if it isn't good for us. Poo is not good for dogs (since it can contain parasites or other diseases), and they certainly don't need it, but they like it anyways!
Comment by Anne Marie Armbruster on November 20, 2010 at 8:30pm
My Corgi never did it but my Golden Retreiver did. I had to be quick when I took her out. She would go for it immediately when finished. With her I think it was a matter of removing it before another animal would know she was around. She was a rescue with a lot of issues. I could never fully break her of it.
Comment by John Wolff on November 20, 2010 at 7:08pm
Coprophagy (sounds better than "eating ****") is widespread in nature and I'm not sure it should be considered abnormal, or a problem. Often, a lot of nutrients are absorbed the 2nd time around. The feces of well-fed animals like us and our pets are loaded with nutrition, a real find for a hungry wild animal like a bear or coyote. Catbox roca is just candy to a dog. Of course, the oral-fecal route is part of the life cycle of many parasites and disease organisms.
It's just disgusting to us. I only want dog exhaust at one end of my dog. You can try to keep it away from them, but that's like trying to hide chocolate.
When the competing Amundsen (Norwegian) and British (Scott) expeditions were wintering in Antarctica before their race to the South Pole, both discovered their sled dog's appetite for human feces. The practical Amundsen simply dug dog-access tunnels into the latrines, voila! sanitation problem solved. The squeamish Scott, disgusted, shot at least some of the valuable dogs.
Comment by Judi, Dawn, Soffie & Griffyn on November 20, 2010 at 11:06am
Here's another site you can check ..... www.dogfoodanalysis.com Beneful is actually not such a great food. It has alot of fillers. Unfortunately, they have big budgets for big ad campaigns. If only they'd take some of that $$$ and use it to improve the quality of the food. We feed Soffie and Griffyn Wellness. It is just one of many high quality foods. The higher quality food costs more but you actually can feed less because of the quality. Do your research, and I think you may find that your little guy just might stop "recyling"! ( and picking up the tempting tidbids right away will probably help too {wink} )
Comment by Renee Kovacs on November 20, 2010 at 9:21am
Caveat: This doesn't apply to the droppings of other animals so much - deer, kitties, rabbits, horses, that's all (apparently) just yummy!
Comment by Renee Kovacs on November 20, 2010 at 9:19am
I wholeheartedly agree with the others who have raised the question of diet. This isn't something we made up, there is plenty of information of this on the internet. I can give anecdotal support to the theory - when my dog was going through a severe allergic reaction (to rabies vaccine, but it took time to deduce) he was put on a strictly limited diet (raw beef, cooked sweet potato & blueberries). Since this is nutritionally incomplete, it didn't take but 2 weeks for him to start eating the 'left-overs' (which he'd never done before). It's instinctual, as an attempt to survive with whatever resources are available. As soon as his diet was nutritionally balanced - he quit, and never did it again.

It doesn't matter if it's raw, kibble, canned - if it is not providing the proper balance of nutrition, dogs will instinctively try to 'correct' the problem however they can.
Comment by Carole and Sophie on November 20, 2010 at 9:11am
One thing has helped with the deer pooh. "Leave It" training has helped so much with her eating pooh. I worked with her and while she still eats deer pooh it isn't as often and when I tell her to "leave it" she frapps around for awhile and then let's it go. One thing that might help is to work with training him using "Leave It" and have a treat that he loves, like cheese or chicken and give him that to get him to veer away from the pooh.
Comment by Carole and Sophie on November 20, 2010 at 9:06am
Well, I guess I got lucky with Sophie. She doesn't eat her own pooh or other dog pooh - but she simply loves deer pooh which is all over a meadow in giant piles - and you would think she was a kid in a candy store. So yes, dogs eat pooh, roll in pooh and I guess when they eat their own pooh you need to pick it up before they can turn it into a snack!

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