Monday, October 24, 2011

Dog Training: No More Poop Eating!

By Dirk Gruenberg


No matter how disgusting we humans find it, dogs love eating poop. Puppies, in particular, are inclined to go about doing so. Usually, however, they will eventually grow out of it.

Another group that commonly eats poop are nursing mothers; their behavior, however, is quite understandable: They could not risk their puppies being found by predators, so they "cleaned up" after them.

In fact, it has been said that humans started keeping dogs around them for the simple purpose of "waste management". But even if this theory were true, today we certainly do not want our little friends eating poop.

Alright, so what do you do? First, go and take your dog to a vet and have him checked out. This is important because health issues could be causing this frustrating behavior. So make sure your dog is okay, and then think about the next step.

When it comes to altering this behavior, there are two routes to take. The first is by training. One way to alter your dog's behavior is to teach it to defecate in only one area and make sure it only has access to that area when defecating.

Another training routine is to teach your dog the "Leave It" command. The advantage of this command is that it is useful for many other situations besides poop eating.

If you do not want to go for training, you can try the second route, which could be considered chemical warfare - and I do not recommend it. The purpose here is to make the feces taste bad to the dog so he won't eat it. Some likely products to use are hot sauce or crushed hot peppers.

However, this, too, can be a lot of work, because it will have to be applied to all feces that your dog has access to. So it may not even be practical. But the idea is simple: Over time your dog would come to the conclusion that feces do not taste good, and he will leave them alone.

Stopping your dog from eating poop can be difficult, but as with any behavioral training, patience and consistency will be rewarded.




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