My dog recently started munching on frozen dog poop from my neighbors dog when we let her outside?!?

why a dog eats poo is quite a common question asked by many dog owners and there can be many different reasons for it.

1. Mimic Behaviour – Often dogs adopted from shelters or those who spend time at a kennel may develop a copy cat behaviour and mimic this behaviour from other shelter dogs.

2. Inadequate diet – Sometimes dogs eat poop because their diets are lacking in essential nutrients and minerals, this is especially true if your dog is being feed low grade dog food. On the other paw, dogs can eat poop because they’re overfed and haven’t properly digested all their food. It sounds gross, but the smell of their faeces reminds them of their food so they partake.Giving your dog a multivitamin supplement and maintaining a healthy diet of fresh food can help lessen the urge to eat stools.

3. Signal Medical problems – Does your dog have a hidden medical problem? Often times your eating poop can be a "cry for health" and signal health issues. Perhaps a visit to the vet for a complete physical exam would uncover an underlining health issue. Internal parasites can lead a dog to consume faeces by leaching nutrients from their host. Thus, the dog will feel unusually hungry and may feed on there poop.

4. Boredom – The lack of exercise and being bored can prompt your dog to eat his own poop to pass the time.

5. Hiding faeces – If your dog is constantly scolded for pooping in the house, he may ingest his poop to conceal the evidence and avoid punishment.

6. Pregnant Females- Some female dogs have an instinctual maternal urge to hide the puppies from predators and eating their faeces is one way to conceal the puppies’ existence. Therefore, the mother may eat the faeces of her puppies, or even house mates in the case of a dog without puppies.

Ways to brake the habit:

1. Crate train – By early crate training, you reduce the chances of your dog pooping in his crate and eating it.

2. Put certain natural ingredients in his food– Foods such as pineapple, spinach and pumpkin give his poop a repugnant taste and smell, retraining his taste buds and reducing the likelihood he’ll eat it.

3. Sprinkle Tabasco sauce on poop – This solution explains itself. One taste of hot sauce and your dog will quickly get the message to “Leave it!”

4. Check his diet –Make sure your dog is eating top quality dog food recommended by veterinarian standards.

5. Immediately clean up any poop – As soon as your dog defecates, scoop it up and throw it away. Of course don't forget to use biodegradable business pick-up bags. Not only will you be guarding his health and breaking him of a dirty habit, but you’ll also have a cleaner yard and you and Fido want have to worry about stepping in landmines.

6. Take regular leash walks – Leash walks are not only great exercise but can be a good distraction from this dirty habit. When you’re walking your dog on a leash you can command him to not eat poop with a quick and firm, “No!”

7. Distract and reward – While you are walking your dog turn on your poop radar. As soon as you see poop approaching while walking firmly say, “No!” Then reward him with praise and a treat. Dogs will do anything for a good organic treat, which is a great way to deter this behavior..

Although we think its gross- its perfectly normal behavior for dogs! There is a theory that dog perform corprophagia (eating poop) because there is something missing in their diet- or they are bored- or to protect themselves from predators. Whatever the reason- at some point in their life, almost every dog that has free run of a fenced yard will chomp.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure- make sure you scoop the yard at least once a day. You can also add either very expensive supplements (available at most pet supply stores) to their diet; sometimes it works- sometimes it doesn't!

I have had better luck adding Adolf's Meat Tenderizer to all the dogs food- the active ingrediant is the same and its a LOT cheaper!

It sounds like your dog's problem may not be as severe as it sounds. It will take some close watching and re-training for a few days but I bet if you are consistent, it will work out sooner than it feels right now.

Our ten-month old pup must have been boarded too long because after a week we discovered this unpleasant habit as well. First of all when a dog eats his own poo it is called Autocoprophagia and when a dog eats the poo of another dog but within it's species (canine) it is called Intraspecific Coprophagia.

We ruled out all nutritional and absorption issues as well as other obscure and unlikely reasons. The typical causes of the behavior can be anxiety separation, boredom and in my dog's case underfeeding and slight deprivation of nutrients. ***The Vet gave him a clean bill of health and ruled out parasites, viral disease, worms, etc. but we knew our dog was not being fed the right foods since we have four other livestock working dogs. So be sure your dog is eating the right, nutritious foods that aren't full of a lot of 'fillers' especially for it's growth stage in life.***

Forbid, Excel, Deter, Pumpkin, Pineapple, PetCo.. All of the products are designed to make dog poo repellant. And ALL are products that are FED **TO** to the ANIMAL WHOSE POOP is **BEING** EATEN. You may not want to clean up your neighbor's dog's poo (and I wouldn't either!) but it would be great if you could feed her dog a treat with about 3 of pills or powder inside (they smell like a dog treat)...OK..sneaky....and not a guarantee anyway. Garlic and Brewer's Yeast did nothing. Since your dog is an Indoor dog, you may want to try spraying Hot Sauce or Dave's Instant Insanity on your neighbor's dog's poo. We are using pumpkin and having luck with it.

It still requires A LOT of behavior modification on our behalf. If you take your dog outside to poo then unless you want to squirt the neighbor's poo you will have to spend a little more time with your dog and ..kind of.. train him all over again, learn his elimination habits and then reward him for sticking to the routine and bring him back inside. It is such a disgusting image that just having to do the task will seem like a hassle, but I bet if you are *consistent*, you will have curtailed the urge within a week or 10 days.

We walk our dog daily and make sure he is hungry when he eats. It is the nature of the dog breed we have to really only once a day but we feed him two small meals a day. Further, we changed our dog's routine and *finally* found his favorite spot to go on our property and just yesterday I noticed he did not give in the the habit. And no, I did not pick up the poo *while he was standing there* since he is a pup he views everything as a game...I do try to police the area and pick up what looks like one of his droppings that I know he will want.

Be aware: Unless someone has actually dealt with this, you will receive a ton of URL's explaining the topic, giant cut and pastes from elsewhere and many of the people who claim to be breeders, trainers, vet techs and the like gave us a lot of information but not of *real* advice (Both in person and on line :c ).

For the love of God! My boxer puppy is going into the yard digging up his turds and throwing them around. I called the vet and will be picking up a container of something called Deter which you put in their food so that their poop is inedible. hopefully. It has been a challenge today because he is having fun and I am dry heaving. I hope the stuff works. You will need to keep your dog inyour yard.

its odd, but my cousins little chihuahua use to eat its own poo, and my cousin just had to clean it up before she ate it, but that was just a phase, but you have to becareful with that because the puppy can get many dieses by eeating other dogs poo, for example it might get worms.One thing you can do it probably showing the dog that eating t wrong by slightly tapping its nose with newspaper.it will then learned that it showed not eat it. other places that might help you with this habbit is a vet.

Well, that's lovely. My beagle did that all the time, my aunt said all beagles do. And I'm pretty sure other dogs eating poo is because of a lack of calcium. Somethin like that.

You meat tenderizer on the dog's food. It works!

they have things to feed the dog so its poop is gross to eat, or yell at her when she eats it, or put gross stuff on the poop

you can buy this stuff at the doggie store, and you sprinkle it on the poo, and on the food, and when they start to eat it, it tastes real bad, so they wont want it no more

Its normal. My dog does that