So my darling pup has decided that he's a poo eater now Generally speaking his recall, leave and drop it are quite good but still nowhere near reliable enough to stop him scavenging for poop so I've been starting to consider investing in a muzzle. My question was mainly aimed at people who have had experience with muzzles,how did you find it? Did it curb the scavenging habits at all? Also any general advice for cutting out this delightful habit would be much appreciated!
My pup used to eat every type of poo she came across, even her own. If I saw poo ahead, say it was on a horse trail or in a field of sheep where it was obvious, I would put her on a lead so she couldn't do it and I would treat her as we walked past so her focus was on me. It gradually just stopped. I trained 'leave it' but a tasty poo treat often won over the command. Nowadays she will still run off if she gets a whiff of something disgusting and once she's gone I can only stop her if I follow her but often by the time I've reached her she's eaten it. The only way I can prevent this is to catch her when her nose is sniffing the air and put her on the lead or I can sometimes distract her by calling and saying 'touch' or 'what's this?' and offering a treat. I also put her lead on when we are near or going past places where she is likely to go off scavenging. But it is much less than it was (she's 21 months) and it was much less from maybe 7-8 months), she's really barely interested in poo now. I didn't consider using a muzzle at the time so I can't help you there.
Hi @shawnlinus , like many others I have this problem with Cassie too. Although I have considered a muzzle I haven't actually done so so cannot help with that question. These days she will ignore quite a lot of it (she's 2 and a bit). But my advice to you is to get yourself a good repertoire of games to play that keep his attention on you, he's still very young isn't he? I am currently working on the recall from food section in Total Recall and am finding that this is helping a great deal, as my problem was her ignoring recall to go some distance to find a certain dogs poo. I had no choice but to turn it into a training opportunity!
Thanks for the replies. @selina27 He'll be 6 months next week. Interestingly enough it seems to be the playing games that exacerbates the poop eating. I've been training retrieve with him recently and it seems that the play gets him hyped up and thats when he starts charging towards the nearest poop to him (and sadly a lot of people using this park don't pick up after their dogs so he has a lot to choose from). On walks where its just that, a walk, he tends not to bother as much...
