Many dogs develop some strange habits, even as youngsters, just in the same way as humans do.
As we all know toddlers and babies will often shovel anything into their mouths and eat it, including the odd insect, and other animals often have the same bad habits.
Unfortunately, these habits may seem intensely disgusting, for example some of you find that your Boston Terriers develop a taste for their own poop! Whilst this may seem like the most “yucky” thing in the world to us, it can, and does happen, but there are steps that you can take to combat it.
The first thing you need to do is keep your dog away from his feces once he has done his business. Unfortunately this is going to mean that he has to be on his leash when he goes for walks or do his potty, even if he is only going in your back garden.
Once he’s answered his nature’s call, you can pull him away before he gets the chance to turn around and scoff the lot, and hopefully this will break the habit over time.
You can also take the dog to the vet, and he may prescribe a product called FORBID, which is similar to the food additive MSG. You can actually use MSG instead, and you should sprinkle this on his food in the evenings for a while.
The purpose of this is so that when he does go to the loo the feces will taste nasty (even nastier than usual!) and this may also put him off from considering it to be a tasty snack.
Don’t worry, as it may take a while to break the habit, but providing you persevere and give him as little access as possible to his own feces once he’s had a poop you should be able to succeed in breaking that dirty habit over time.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Margaret Brice // Jun 28, 2008 at 11:29 am
Please let me know what does it mean MSG?
I can tell you we have 3 Boston Terriers, 2 male and one female. The female (2 years) since we had her day one she had this bad habit with her own poop, but she eats the other two ones.
The male (7 years, in the other hand, the oldest, he develop this habit since we got the second one (5 years), he eats the others poop not his.
We have tried meat tenderize, forbid, pepper, you name it we have try it, and not been able to eliminate this habit. We pick up as soon as they do it, but sometimes if we forget, they will start doing it.
The mail when he eats he throws up but the female she does not.
Please if you have another idea, please let me know.
We take them for long walks and see f that could help, but they have their days…
2 Christine Z // Jun 30, 2008 at 8:22 am
I too have a male Boston Terrier named Logan who enjoys eating other dog’s droppings. We have tried everything! We give him yogurt everyday because we heard that will stop it. It did seem to slow it down a bit. My husband swears that if and when we give him cooked meat or chicken on his dinner, he seems less likely to go after the droppings of other dogs. He has never eaten his own, just other dog’s! If anyone knows of a solution to this awful habit, please write and let us know!
3 Admin // Jul 3, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Hi Margaret and Christine, thanks for your comments. I will be writing more information about this “poo eating” problem, also known as Coprophagia.
Check back here often - and of course I’ll send everyone an email when the new info comes out.
4 Margaret Brice // Jul 6, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Chistine, we have not try the yogurt. The male that has this habit, they have run test to see if is sometging missing in his body. They decide it that it could be psicological :-(. He is in a special food, what he eats is the poo of the other male.
I just hope can get something to break this one.
Thanks for the coments.
5 Courtney Felix // Jul 10, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Hello. I have a 1 1/2 year old female Boston named Jayden. We have had her since she was a pup and about 7 to 8 mths ago she started to eat her own feces. She then vomits all over making a mess. She also does not like to go potty out side. She waits to come in and goes on the carpet or in her kennel while we are asleep then she cries and yelps until we come to the rescue! We also have a 5 year old boston male (no problems) and a 6 mth old female Am. bulldog (no problems). Jayden has always been the cuddley one who gets alot of attention. So I do not know if this is an out cry and if so why? I am worried because I have a baby on the way and I do not want this problem to continue with a baby crawling around the hosue. Is there any part of the this that you know how to possibley fix?
6 familymamma // Jul 11, 2008 at 12:13 am
I am in a similar boat as Christine and Margaret. My 1 year old female Boston (Nauni) used to eat her poop - I gave her Deter and pulled her away and told her “yucky” every time she went near her poop. I still have to keep alert, but now the habit is broken and the episodes are fewer and further between. My problem now is cat poop. Our neighbors cats think our yard is their litter box and Nauni thinks there poop is like candy. How can I get her to stop?!
7 Courtney Felix // Jul 16, 2008 at 2:57 pm
The main problem with it though is she does it at night while my husband and I are asleep or during the day while we are gone…I can leave her out side for 23 hours of the day and the second I put her in her kennel and leave she goes. My vet said it is the breed but have never had this happen in the past and I do not know what to do.
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