Leashes to Litterboxes

Coprophagia, a pretty long word for what it really means.  According to Wikipedia it is "consumption of feces, from the Greek copros (feces) and phagein (eat). Many animal species have evolved to practice coprophagia; other species do not normally consume feces but may do so under unusual conditions."

Why do some animals do it?  Well some animals like rabbits and guinea pigs have a rather simple digestive system and sometimes the poop they have is not quite finished digesting so they will eat it almost immediately and have it digested again.   Other animals like dogs will eat their poop for other reasons.  Sometimes it is a learned behavior from watching their owners scoop, sometimes it is a boredom thing, sometimes it is done to get attention, sometimes it can be due to a medical condition and other times it is just their way of cleaning up.

Coprophagia is not a behavior that most humans would like their pets to have.  Often it is a behavior that will reduce once a puppy matures but sometimes it has to be dealt with by a little bit of training on the part of the owner. 

Tips to help prevent coprophagia:

1.  Clean up immediately after your pet has defecated.

2.  Make the feces unappealing.  You can try feeding your dog a teaspoon of pineapple, spinach or there is a commercial product available called forbid.  If you have more than one pet in the household it may be necessary to feed all of them one of these items as the "poop eater" may notice that his poop tastes awful but will eat the other’s feces.

3.  If the dog is still fond of feces, try teaching your dog not to touch it using the command ‘Off.’ Put your dog on leash and walk him by some feces. If he shows any interest in it, tell him, ‘No, off.’ If he continues to go for it, then loudly scold him, ‘OFF!!!’ and pull him away from it with a short, sharp tug on the leash. When he stops, praise him. Continue walking and keep returning to different piles of feces over and over, repeating the off procedure until he gets the idea that you disapprove of his dietary interests. Whenever he shows no interest in the feces, be sure to tell him how happy you are through praise and reward.

Just remember when dealing with coprophagia it can sometimes be a normal thing for animals to do and just because we don’t like it and think its disgusting your pet may just be keeping the place clean for you.  No amount of scolding will help deal with the behavior.  Try the above tricks and if they don’t work talk to your veterinarian or staff to get a little more help.

Tags: pet, dog, caged pets, behavior

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 7:22 am and is filed under Training Tips, Caged Animals, Leash Tales, Litterbox Scoop, All Creatures Great and Small. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.