Canine Potential's Dog Blog

Coprophagia or Dogs Can Be Gross

I love River Boat, my two year old Black Labrador. He was born nine condos down from where I am now living here in Oregon with the Columbia River right out my back door…hence his name. 

True confession – River is a poop eater!

We moved from five acres to a condo with no yard, so now we are out with the dogs on leash when they do their business so we always pick it up right away. I had been working on managing River’s corprophagia, the eating of stools, with the goal of extinguishing the behavior for about six months before we moved. Here’s our story.

River did not eat his own stool but those of his two canine housemates, Buddy, Doxie/Yorkie mix 11 years old and Mellie, Golden Retriever 5 years old. River did not start eating stool until after he was sixteen months old. Yuck! 

So first, I went on-line [what else?] and made a list of possible solutions to this situation. I wanted to go down the list and try each idea for one month to give it time to work, trying avoid starting too many things at once and then not knowing which worked.

First, my husband Jerry, and I started managing how we let the dogs out. Letting Buddy and Mellie out together and then let River out and go with him to scoop immediately. Management works but sometimes we as humans relaxed our resolve and River would find a snack.

While we managed the outdoor time we also switched the dog’s foods to change the texture of the stool, and maybe then the stool would not be as desirable as the solid tootsie type are. This may have had some effect on desirability as he would sometimes now walk away from the stool. But it was not the solution.

Next I added enzymes to River’s diet maybe he was having trouble metabolizing his food properly. I could not tell if that was helpful, he still ate stools if we didn’t get to them quick enough.

Then I feed a coprophagia deterrent to Buddy and Mellie as directed by the label. Hard to tell again if our management was getting better or if these tablets really helped.

After about six months of working our way through the solutions we moved to Oregon and all bathroom outings are on leash, so the problem is solved. 

When I think of all the things we tried before we moved it seems that management and changing dog foods so their stools would be of a softer texture both had the effect of a stool consumption reduction. Since moving it is not even an option since we are taking the dogs out on leash and cleaning up immediately. Do I think the behavior is extinguished? We head back to Whidbey for a visit in a few days…we’ll see.