Hello, apologies for the nature of this thread but my chocolate lab is behaving badly when it comes to the lovely subject of poop eating! I have had her for 1 year and she is a rescue. She is 3 years old herself and lovely in every way! About 3 months ago she seemed to have a bad spell of dioreah that she couldn’t shake, a trip to the vets and we changed her diet to fish and potato as the vet seemed to think it may be a beef allergy - this worked well and her stool because normal again. Around this time she started eating other dogs poop on her walks - it started out of nowhere as I have had her for a year and she had never done it previously. She will eat up 20 poops at least if I don’t put her on a lead - she seems to go into a trance and tries to eat as many as she can - it’s all she thinks about - her head it constantly to the floor sniffing for poops. She’s got great re-call and very responsive but when she goes into this ‘trance’ she is completely unresponsive. I have been training her the ‘leave it’ command which she responds to excellently at home! But out on a walk she takes very little notice. She lives with her brother - another chocolate lab and she never eats his poop or her own - it’s only other dogs when we’re out on a walk, there is never any competition between the two and we feed them separately (so they don’t race to eat their food) - I feed her 140grams twice a day which may be a little more than she should be getting for her wheight (21.8kg) but she’s an extremely active dog and I take her out for 2 hours a day ( 1hr in the morning, 1hr afternoon). She seems to be getting worse at eating poop and it’s no fun for her to be on a lead all the time - has anyone else had this problem or any advice? (Other than a last resort muzzle)? I am getting a dog trainer to help with the leave it command although she is already good at this - she just becomes obsessed with eating poop! Thanks for your time!
Hi @Lew Barker Have you tried collecting some of the strange dogs' faeces? Teach leave it at home where you will have control on the dog and the specific and unattractive (at least to us) distraction.
The first step, is to do what you need to do, to prevent (and therefore hopefully break) the unwanted habit. If you don't want to keep her on leash, then you could investigate muzzling her - although be warned that some poop eaters do force the muzzle into the poop and you end up with a poopy muzzle(!!). I think your best bet is going to be keeping her on leash and deliberately taking her to locations where there are poops - poops that YOU KNOW WHERE THEY ARE - so you can prevent her reaching them and practice 'leave', reinforcing that with something AMAZING and BETTER than poop (I highly recommend tripe sticks!). When she can do this on a regular length of leash, you can then graduate to the long-line and the same thing. You want to end up with an automatic response that she is basically 'finding' you poops in exchange for a tripe stick. Finding poops permanently might suck a bit, but is much better than eating them....
Hi Lew, I’m just wondering how you have progressed with the poop eating issue as reading your initial post I’m in exactly the same situation with my rescue dog. I’ll own up - she isn’t a lab - but her relationship with anything that resembles food, including other dogs poo and basically any animals poo, is very Lab like from what I can gather. She is actually a Dalmatian x Bodeguero (similar to Parson Jack Russell in appearance), about the size of a Cocker, and came over from a rescue in Spain last May. She was 14 months old at the time and had been with them since being dumped at 4 weeks old. She has just turned 2. At first I thought the poop eating was a sort of puppy/settling in thing but after 3 months I began to realise it was getting worse and not better. She is exactly like your dog in that her walks are purely an opportunity to hunt out and consume as much poop as possible. Unfortunately I live in a rural/coastal area with a huge dog population and lazy owners - it’s basically one huge free open buffet for Molly. Like your dog she totally understands “leave it”, she even preempts me saying it by picking other stuff up (feathers etc) running towards me then dropping before I can even say leave it and expecting her reward. Walking was my hobby/passion, I do about 7 or so miles per day every day and wanted to do long distance walking with Molly. However, most days I sadly no longer enjoy my walks as it’s just a constant head down looking for poop to avoid and yelling leave it every 2 minutes. I try to stay calm but it does get me down and most days I wish I had adopted another dog - how awful does that sound? I feel ashamed even saying it. I’ve tried a muzzle but just kept getting a leg full of poo when she came back frustrated rubbing it on my leg. Plus she is very wily and unless super tight can get the muzzle off. Trainers so far just don’t want to know as the behaviour is “too self rewarding” and probably not a quick enough fix for them. I really am at the end of my tether with this - it’s making my husband feel physically sick and me anxious and stressed. I apologise for rambling on but just want to know from someone who has been going through the same issue whether there is light at the end of the tunnel? I’ve been around dogs all my life, my own and other peoples and have never encountered this type of behaviour before, maybe I’ve just been lucky previously! If you can let me know how you got on that would be great!
