Help! he eats his own poo!

[grippychicken]

Hi,

I have a six month old beagle who likes to eat his own poo! Hes not interested in other dogs only his own.

When he is out in the garden we have to watch him closely incase he goes to the toilet, if he does we wait by the back door and wait for him to finish, and he will come in for a treat, I then leave him shut in while I pick up the poo.

Occasionally after he has finished he turns round to sniff it, but if I say 'leave' he will come in for the treat instead. If you are not watching him at the time he goes to the toilet (and he seems to know this) he will generally eat it straight away, but occasionally he will still come in for a treat without eating it first even if you wern't watching him, I can tell by his body language that he is waiting for a treat, and therefore has probably gone to the toilet.

We have half the garden fenced off at the moment as the other half is not viewable from the kitchen, and I would be concerned about him going to the toilet where we could not see him. I would like to take this fence down in the spring, and am therefore very keen to try and rid him of this habit.

Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated. :)

[RedyreRottweilers]

You are on the right track. Keep supervising, and keep picking up. You really should go out with the dog and not give him any opportunity to snack on his leavings.

Stool eating, as repugnant as it is to us, is a natural behavior among dogs, particularly puppies. It evolved as a survival mechanism in wild canids to keep the den area cleaner.

Most puppies grow out of it.

[grippychicken]

I do hope he will grow out of it, but my gut feeling is that he won't, beagles are stomach orientated dogs at the best of times!

[Cheetah]

When I first brought my corgi, Shippo, home, he was a poop eater... he was 12 weeks old and had developed the habit while still with his litter. I just never let him out alone,and I kept him on a leash - anything to prevent him from turning around and eating his poop. After the first month of just preventing it, he stopped (Out of sight, out of mind!). I should also mention that from what I have seen, corgis like to eat things too...