Evelyn asked this question:

“My 2 year old labrador Charlie likes eating poop. I give him nutritional supplements but it hasnt stopped him. Any suggestions??”

Lisa asked a similar question:

“My 9month old lab went camping and loved it but we found that he had a bad habbit of finding poop in the bush and would eat it. Its not his own but other animals and human poop. My dog has seen poop before on the side of the road or at the park but never tried to eat it, why at camp?”

Here is our advice..

The scientific term for poop eating is “Coprophagia”. It looks as though you have looked into this, as you have tried supplementing Charlie’s diet in case it is a nutrient deficiency. Depending on whose poop your Labrador is eating, you need to approach training him in a couple of ways.

For general poop-eating (either eating his own or that of other dogs, cats etc..), you need to keep his attention off the urge to “chew the poo” by teaching him the leave it command. Start doing this in an area where there is no faeces and teach him the leave command using a ball or one of his toys. When he successfully leaves it alone, treat and praise him. Do this regularly over a couple of weeks, then it is time to venture out into poop country!

Take him out on a leash to an area you know has a bit of dog mess around. Purposely go near each deposit and when Charlie starts heading off for an unscheduled snack, use the leave command and guide him away from it. Again, do this for a couple of weeks - rewarding him with a treat each time he avoids the poop and then try it with him off the leash. Over the weeks, he will have learned that there is more fun to be had not eating poop and should forget about his previous disgusting urges.

If the problem is that he only eats his own poop, then you can buy drops that you add to his food that will make his poop taste bad to him (like it shouldn’t already!!). Some people suggest that adding pineapple chunks into his diet will have the same effect, and I am sure that will be cheaper than the drops, so you could give that a try first.

And here is my best guess for Lisa’s question “why at camp?”:

The simple fact is, it is somewhere new and exciting - what the other animals (and to some extent the humans too) are eating, and therefore pooing out too, may be something he hasn’t come across before that is making the poop much more tempting than “home grown” stuff!