Poop eating dogs is not an uncommon factor. A dog owner knows that dog have this bad behaviour in them. Most of the owners however wonder why the dogs are in the habit of eating poop, as it is indecent, disgusting and unhealthy too. In reality, you will find many dogs in such a behaviour, which can lead to stress in owners. This coprophagia, as it is generally known as, may be due to the anxiety in dogs or they may be malnourished.
Reasons for Dogs Eating Poop
There are various reasons for dogs doing such a disgusting thing. In fact, the reason may be due to hunger or maybe they are trying to keep their space clean. Therefore do not leave your dog hungry or in a dirty space, this makes them uneasy and they will solve it in their own manner, many times eating their own waste.
Poop eating of dogs will also mean they have health issue. A dog that is undernourished has this habit or may be it does not get enough nutrients because of worms or parasites, which suck their nutrients from the food. So we know now that the dogs are getting enough nutrients from their daily food.
Anxiousness is also one of the reasons for dogs to eat poop, or maybe they are mimicking you in the way you pick it up while cleaning and so they repeat in their way. Or some other reason may be due to watching other dogs doing so.
Regardless of why they are in such a habit or why they do it, the issue is not so difficult to solve.
Solving the Behaviour
If you want to solve their poop eating problem, then you must first go get a health check done from the vet. In case the behaviour is for the first time, then it is important you visit the vet. A regular poop eating behaviour means the dog has worms or even the parasites or maybe you can blame it on the malnutrition. Therefore take proper advice from the vet and begin treatment immediately.
If your dog gets a check up done from the vet and he finds nothing wrong with the dog, but the dog doesn’t stop eating poop, and maybe it doesn’t have any other grave issues that may get directly related to the problem, then it means you need to solve the problem and find out the other reasons.
Start with a clean space for the dog. Clean up the entire poop from its space daily, also check if your pathways have any poop left and then clean it up. So you see the problem is not why they eat the poop, you can solve this problem by just getting rid of the origin of the dogs problem.
Change the Behaviour
On the other hand you can adopt different measures to tackle this behaviour. Though it may sound odd, the taste of the Cayenne pepper and the bitter apple can be worse to taste than the poop. Give the dog a daily dose of pumpkin puree, and see how the dog finds the poop less appealing. Make use of water spray or you can also give a command and say “NO” to it when they are about to east the poop.
Your dog’s coprophagia issue is easy to tackle, but when outside without a leash you must be watchful and be consistent.