Dog Behavior Blog

The Scoop On Poop

Several months after the birth of my first son, my husband and I were about to move from Wisconsin to New Hampshire. We had a "house cooling" party and invited tons of our friends to our house in order to bid a fond adieu to all. Prior to the party, I was a little worried that my dog training colleagues from work and my new mommy friends would be an awkward pairing and have nothing to talk about. It turns out this was a misplaced concern.

Walking from the living room to the kitchen to check that the ice cream bar was well stocked, I had the opportunity to pass by and eavesdrop on a number of conversations. First I came to a group of moms holding dog trainers in stitches while discussing how best to refer to incidents in which diapers spectacularly fail to do their job. Blow outs? Holy molys? Volcanic eruptions? Next, I heard a group of dog trainers entertaining some moms with stories of all the places dog poop has gotten lost or become irretrievable while on walks. In a pile of leaves? Check. On the bottom of a fellow walker's shoe? Check. Down a sewer grate? Check.

Finally, I passed a more interactive group made up of moms and dog trainers discussing how to get rid of the smell of poop, and how best to clean it off of various surfaces. Poop, it seems, truly is everywhere. I realized that poop is a ubiquitous subject and certainly fit for discussion anywhere, including here.
This ever present substance may meet up with a high "yuck" quotient for most humans, but for dogs, it's great! Many problems with dogs, from the point of view of their owners, stem from a serious difference between members of the two species. You see, people think poop is gross, albeit it funny in certain contexts, whereas dogs LOVE poop. If you don't think that this difference can cause a serious problem within a relationship, then it is obvious that you have yet to own a dog who loves to roll in poop, or worse, loves to eat poop. Four out of five owners surveyed find both of these behaviors to be completely disgusting, and the other one out of five was too busy giving the dog an unexpected bath to answer the survey.

If your dog is eating poop (a behavior called coprophagia), by all means check with your veterinarian to see if some medical issue is at the root of this behavioral issue. That is sometimes, but not always, the case. For example, some dogs eat poop as a manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder. For dogs without a serious medical issue at the root of the problem, a change in diet may help, as sometimes dogs seem to eat poop to get additional nutrients.

Higher quality food may improve the situation. For dogs who only eat their own eat poop, you can, if your veterinarian approves this approach, add Forbid, an enzymatic product, or meat tenderizer to their food, which makes the poop unpalatable to many dogs.

Because dogs love it so much, your best defense is to remove the opportunity for your dog to come into contact with it. Of course, this is not always possible, because dogs have a tendency to find it, but do your best. Keep your yard free of poop by removing it as soon as it is deposited, or at least daily. Ideally, do this poop removal when your dog is not watching. Some dogs seem to get more interested in poop if their owners seem to consider it to be valuable, which picking it up certainly indicates. If there is an area where you go for walks that has a high concentration of it, keep your dog on leash and close to you as you go by, and perhaps give him treats to occupy him as you pass by the poop hot zone. Some dogs are only seasonal poop eaters, enjoying winter "poopsicles", so you may have to be more vigilant during winter.

Work on your recall so that if you see your dog about to roll in any poop or about to eat it, you can call him away from it. When you do this, be sure to reinforce your dog with something amazing such as a real bone or several treat-sized pieces of liver. When a dog leaves poop to come to you, they have done the doggy equivalent of solving the climate crisis and ought to be reinforced accordingly.

Dogs and people have so much in common, but our similarities end with the views of our different species on poop. We'll sooner get universal political agreement on taxes than achieve agreement between people and dogs on whether poop deserves a paws up or a thumbs down rating in desirability. It does help when dealing with one of these problems to remember that to your dog, it is not gross, this wonderful stuff called poop. Your dog is not being weird, or antisocial, or disturbed if he eats or rolls in poop. He's just being a dog.

--Karen B. London

Singleton Puppies

For dogs, like many other species, early experiences are critical for normal social development, and it is pretty well known that puppies have the best chance for normal social development if they are allowed to be with their littermates for 7-8weeks at least.

It is really the exception for puppies not to have littermates or not to get to be with them for at least these few weeks. However, singleton puppies do happen, and they do tend to have issues. If you ever meet a dog named Solo, Uno, or Only, the first question to ask is whether the dog was the only puppy in its litter, because if so, there is a suite of problems that may exist.

Of course, you can be wrong about these names. I once wrote a magazine article for The BARK that mentioned a dog named Solo who had some serious behavior issues, and I thought at first he must have been a singleton. However, in researching the story, I learned that the dog came from a litter of several puppies and was named after the Solo River in Indonesia where fossils of Homo erectus were first found.

In a typical litter of three to twelve puppies, there is constant physical contact. The puppies crawl all over each other, and they are used to the warmth, the contact, the interruptions, and the movement that result from being in a pile of dogs.

The problems that singleton puppies are prone to having are the result of not being raised in this standard puppy environment. Typical problems in singletons are lack of bite inhibition, being unable to get out of trouble calmly and graciously, an inability to diffuse social tension, inability to handle frustration, lack of social skills, lack of impulse control, and touch sensitivity.

If you find out about a singleton puppy early -- anytime before the puppy heads to its new home particularly, there are things that can be done. Be sure to work on teaching bite inhibition early and often, and handle the puppy a lot to avoid issues with touch sensitivity. Any gentle, regular handling is likely to help. Push the puppy off the nipple once or twice a feeding to get the puppy used to interruptions and handling the resulting frustration. Have the puppy spend time with puppies of the same age a lot and as early as possible.

If at all possible, consider raising the puppy with another litter. Getting to spend a lot of time with another litter lets a singleton puppy have a more typical or normal experience as a young puppy. The play time that puppies spend with each other goes a long way towards teaching puppies many of their social skills, including bite inhibition, frustration tolerance, impulse control, self control, and the ability to be flexible in all sorts of social interactions.

The adorable play between puppies, which is so enjoyable to watch, is anything but light-hearted frivolous behavior -- it provides puppies the foundation for normal, healthy social behavior as adults in many contexts and is a critical part of a puppy's development and education.

I knew a singleton Irish Water Spaniel that I met at age two. He was full of himself, had no frustration tolerance, little self control and almost no impulse control. He did, by the way, show beautifully in the ring! His issues with frustration and control led to leash aggression with other dogs. His amazing owner, who had actually bred him, was able to turn him around, but it was a huge project. The next litter from the same female was also a solo puppy who turned out fine and totally normal, except for being a bit large for the breed, which is not unusual for singleton puppies. The owner did everything right with her second solo puppy. She raised this puppy with a Lab litter that was only a few days different in age than her puppy, and did everything else I advised.

She did end up spaying the breeding female, figuring that once could be a fluke, but that since it happened a second time, there was too high a risk of it happening again. This second singleton puppy, benefiting from all the owner did to help her, was in no way behaviorally like most singletons. She turned out completely normal from a behavioral perspective, despite an unusual beginning and this is an amazing accomplishment.

--Karen London