Introduction
While we all love our dogs, we don’t always love the things they do. In fact, some of the things that our beloved dogs do can sometimes be downright disgusting; eating one’s own stool falls into this category. It is undoubtedly upsetting to see your dog eating stool, but disciplining your dog for this behavior does not usually work.
What You Can Do
Many dogs naturally eat their own stool, and they do not understand the behavior as something wrong. Trying to communicate to your dog that eating his or her own stool is unacceptable is almost impossible. It is best to try to prevent your dog from developing this habit in the first place, or by preventing the behavior all together.
The first thing you can do to prevent this behavior is to remove the stool from your dog’s environment. You will need to immediately scoop up any stool in your yard, and throw it away out of your dog’s reach. Of course if you are not home during the day, or cannot always be there to immediately take away the stool, then you may want to use a product that will make the stool taste bad.
There are a number of products on the market today that have been developed specifically to stop this behavior. These products are usually a powder that is mixed in with the dog’s food. The products are harmless to your dog, but it will make your dog’s stool taste horrible. You will only need to use this product for a short while, and your dog will quickly learn that it doesn’t pay to eat stool.