Coprophagia
Coprohagia is the technical term for eating feces. This has been
studied in dogs by several people with no definitive answer for
"why" being found.
Nutritional deficiencies may be present in some dogs, but not very
many. This may be boredom related in many dogs. It has some
"natural" roots in the fact that dams often eat their pup's stools,
apparently as a method of hiding their presence from predators. Dogs
will eat the stools of other species, especially cats and rabbits,
too. Dogs obviously do not find the taste of feces objectionable or
the behaviour would be self correcting. So I think of this as a
natural behaviour that upsets people. Since dogs have to live with
people, it is becomes an issue. There is a product sold that is
supposed to help with this habit -- Forbid. It doesn't work in all
cases (it might not even work in most cases). Another alternative is
putting meat tenderizer in the dog's food. This works for some dogs.
Walking a dog on a leash and working hard to keep it from turning
and eating its stool is helpful. It is sometimes possible to
distract the dog by running a short distance after the dog has a
bowel movement or by taking a couple of rapid steps then telling the
dog to "sit" and giving it a treat. These behaviours may stay on as
substitutes to eating the stool. If you can keep the dog from eating
stool for a month or so it is sometimes long enough to break the
habit. Picking up stool to prevent its ingestion works in dogs that
don't quickly eat their own stool but do so when put in the yard
alone. "Booby trapping" a sample of stool by cutting it in half
lengthwise, and putting some Tabasco type sauce on the inside of the
stool, then putting it back together so that the dog is not aware of
the hot sauce until it eats the stool can help in some cases. This
can be a hard habit to break.
