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

Comments

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thanks for this article. My dog has obsessively tried to eat her poop all her two years. When she was a puppy she would poop spinning in a circle cause she was trying to eat it before it even hit the ground. I have tried everything but OCD meds, but the only thing that seemed to work is to ALWAYS be there when she goes, and she has slowly and gradually come around. But really, she hasn't, we are just militant about observing her. After almost two years of this training, she hadn't eaten one in a long time, but unfortunately that was only because we never gave her the chance. We recently moved into a bigger house and she can get away, drop one, and eat it much easier now. I get incredibly frustrated, and feel like I am failing as a dog owner. So thank you for this article, I need to work on changing my perspective.

[darshini]

Hello there, I was wondering if I could be given some advice. My dog has recently been behaving oddly. She usually pees and poops in one spot but for the past few months, it seems that she does it wherever she pleases. Which is really unlike her because as soon as she does it, she assumes this position that tells me that she knows she's done something wrong or goes and hides in a corner and makes herself as invisible as possible.
We took her to the vet but he said health-wise, she's absolutely fine. Gave us advice on how to train her to go to one spot which was useless because she knoows that- she's done it fr the past 8 years.
So-o help?

[Dog Breed Dictionary]

Dog Poo eating became such a problem with my mother in laws dog that the vet prescribed a medication that makes the poo taste terrible.

That fixed the problem in a jiffy!

[Randall Johnson]

My three dogs rarely show an interest in eating poop, and when they do, I basically look the other way because it’s not obsessive- compulsive or an indication of some kind of nutritional deficiency and I see no reason to make a big issue out of it. However, my male Dalmatian mix, whom I adopted off the street nine months ago, often comes back from a solitary stroll around the neighborhood reeking of a chance encounter with a pile of cow dung. When this happens, I grab his towel, shampoo, and scrub brush and give him a quick bath with the garden hose, which he submits to with visible reluctance. The bath itself usually takes no more than five minutes, after which I give him a vigorous rub-down with the towel, then he normally sits down in the grass and basks in the sun. The incident is forgotten and life goes on until the next ‘close encounter of the poopy kind’. Now, I’ve read several hypotheses that attempt to explain why dogs take great delight in rolling around in foul smelling substances, none of which I found especially convincing. Whatever evolutionary-genetic reason may underlie this behavior, the fact remains that, when given the opportunity, dogs will continue to have a mysterious (to us) fascination with poop and they’re not going to change, so it’s really up to us to change how we react to it. Instead of screaming or shouting or otherwise getting upset, do whatever it takes to get the dog cleaned up with as little stress as possible (for both parties) and move on.