Expert: Have4Paws - 12/26/2001

Question
We recently adopted a stray beagle bassett puppy, about a 6-month-old male.  He is a very nice and affectionate dog with one major difficulty: he tries to eat and even eats the feces of our 11-year-old female beagle.  We try to walk along behind them, being sure to clean up immediately, but we can't catch every time one of them goes to the bathroom because we have a fenced-in yard which they can access from a doggie door.  Our problem is obvious - how can we get this dog to stop eating poop?

Thanks.

Answer
Hi and thanks for writing to me!

Yes, I know this is a pretty gross problem albeit frequently typical for puppies.

There is a product called "FORBID" which you can purchase from your vet. It is a powder that you sprinkle onto their food and it makes the feces smell undesirable and taste bad. I will tell you though that it is not fool-proof and only works about 50-60% of the time and even then when you stop using it the problem can return. I would still attempt it for a month or so if you can afford to do so. Obviously BOTH dogs would have to get it so there is no desirable feces to be eaten anywhere in the yard.

Unfortunately, the ONLY 100% reliable method is doing what you are already atempting......picking up each and every stool! I know it is hard when you have a doggie door and what you may have to do for a while is close off the doggie door and "take them out" each time so you can monitor where and when they go and pick it up. Also try limiting the area in which they are allowed to go to the bathroom to a small area of the yard. Disciplining the puppy is worthless and in fact can inadvertently even reinforce a bad habit and make him afraid of you (because of neg/pos reinforcement theories.) Punitive discipline (yelling, or any physical punishment NEVER works to curb the behavior, it only causes other probelms!)so please do not resort to this.

So....... wish I could give you a magic answer to this one but I can't. Some dogs do it, some never do, some outgrow it, some don't. And by the way, to my knowledge all the baloney about this showing a nutritional defiency is just that, BALONEY, there has been no significant research to prove this so don't let anyone try to talk you into expensive and unnecessary herbal junk!

Good luck and feel free to contact me directly anytime at Have4Paws@aol.com.