Training & Behavior

A client rang me from her back garden once, whispering, as though the spaniel might overhear her betraying him. "He is doing it again," she said. "Eating it. Straight out of the grass." She had kept dogs for thirty years and this one had beaten her. She had tried the powder from the pet shop, the tinned pineapple, the hot sauce her neighbour swore by. Nothing. Underneath the disgust sat the question every owner eventually asks: what is wrong with him?

Usually nothing. Coprophagia, to give stool eating its clinical name, feels like a symptom of something broken and is, most of the time, perfectly ordinary dog behaviour that we happen to find revolting. A nursing bitch will clean up after her puppies from the first day, because a dirty nest attracts predators and parasites, and nobody thinks she has a disorder. Puppies investigate the world with their mouths, and a good number of them try faeces the way they try socks, bark chippings and the corner of the sofa. Most quietly stop by a year old. Then there are the adults, and surveys of owners suggest roughly one dog in six does it with some regularity, with about a quarter having been caught at it at least once. Common does not mean pleasant. It does mean you are not the only person standing in a garden at seven in the morning, horrified.

Before anybody talks about training, rule out the medical side, because a dog who has never done this and suddenly starts at seven years old is telling you something. Intestinal parasites, particularly giardia and whipworm, irritate the gut and change appetite, so take a fresh stool sample with you. Exocrine pancreatic insufficiency is worth knowing about: the pancreas stops producing enough digestive enzymes, food passes through barely broken down, and the dog is ravenously hungry while losing weight, with pale, greasy, alarmingly large stools. Those dogs are effectively starving in the middle of plenty, and eating faeces is a rational response. Other malabsorption problems do the same on a smaller scale, as does a diet this particular dog is not digesting well, which is a conversation for your vet rather than a reason to swap food every fortnight. Medication matters too. Steroids such as prednisolone crank appetite up hard, over-supplemented thyroid medication can do it, and some anti-seizure drugs leave a dog hunting for anything edible.

Once the physical side is clear, look at history. A depressing number of stool eaters were house-trained by punishment. The dog who was shouted at, rubbed in it, dragged across the kitchen by the collar and shut outside did not learn to toilet in the garden. He learned that a human plus a pile of poo equals something frightening, and he found the only solution available to a dog: remove the poo. Fast. Before she sees it. This is why the behaviour is so over-represented in dogs from crowded commercial breeding setups and neglected kennels, where puppies live alongside waste they cannot escape and tidying it away by mouth is the only housekeeping on offer. Boredom does its share too. A dog left alone in a garden for hours with nothing to investigate will eventually investigate the one interesting thing there.

And then there is straightforward scavenging, which is not a problem so much as a career. Cat faeces are the classic jackpot, because cat food is protein-dense and what comes out the other end still smells like food to a dog. Goose droppings on the school field, horse manure on the bridleway, the neighbour's rabbit hutch clearings. Any dog who finds one of these is a dog who will check that spot for the rest of his life, because intermittent rewards build the stubbornest habits there are.

What actually shifts it is unglamorous. Pick up immediately, every single time, including in the dark with a torch, which means going out with your dog at night rather than opening the door and hoping. A behaviour that cannot be rehearsed starts to fade, and every successful mouthful makes the next one more likely. Teach a proper leave it, built calmly indoors on dull objects and paid well, long before you need it in an emergency. A cue you have only ever shouted in a panic is not a cue, it is noise. Pair that with a recall you pay generously for, and mind the detail most people get wrong: if calling your dog off a pile always ends in a grabbed collar and a march home, you have taught him that coming back finishes the walk. Call, reward properly, then release him back to sniffing somewhere else.

Manage the cat. A covered litter tray, a high-sided one, a tray up on a surface, or a baby gate propped a few inches off the floor so the cat slips under and the dog does not. Scooping several times a day helps more than any product. On walks where you know there is livestock mess or a flock of geese, use a long line, and give the dog better things to do with his nose. Sniffing genuinely tires dogs out, and a dog with a satisfying job is less interested in freelancing.

The additives sold to make stools taste unpleasant deserve their reputation. Published success rates are dismal, in the single digits for most products, and the design has an obvious flaw: they only treat your dog's own output. They do nothing about the cat tray, the other dog, or the bridleway.

Whatever you do, do not punish. Shouting turns the whole thing into a race, and the dog learns to swallow faster or to slip behind the shed. Some dogs find being chased around the lawn quite good fun, which means your telling-off is functioning as a reward. Talk to your vet about worming frequency, keep the pick-up habit tight, and accept that a few dogs stay opportunists for life. Managing a scavenger is not a failure of training. It is just the deal you have with that particular dog.