Dogs Eating Poop: One Species Evolutionary Meat is another Species Evolutionary Poison

12/6/2022

So, your dog eats poop. Is it deviant? Or an elegant evolutionary solution?

In this podcast, Jane and Mark look at the research and talk about the possible functions of poop-eating, what works and does not work to stop it, and why.

We won’t say you’ll come away happy that your dog eats poop, but for sure you’ll see it in a different light.

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Referenced Courses and Titles

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Further reading and citations to the referenced studies and findings

The Paradox of Canine Conspecific Coprophagy - Veterinary Medicine and Science. 4. 10.1002/vms3.92.
Hart, Benjamin & Hart, Lynette & Thigpen, Abigail & Tran, Alisha & Bain, Melissa. (2018).
UC Davis study of stool-eating dogs that examined the effectiveness of various methods to stop stool eating and also looked at correlations between stool eating and other behaviors.

Gastric Acidity, Digesting Bones, Gut Transit Time and Salmonella - Vets All Natural
Article on the canine digestive system and the acidic properties of the canine digestive tract.

I found this fragment copied onto a number of websites without any attribution, nor were the studies linked or the citations included. I did search up the studies cited and linked them (with one exception). I was unable to find where the original text came from but I’m including it because it’s out there already many times and it’s a great summary of the workings of the canine digestive system. If anyone knows the original source, please let me know - I would be delighted to include attribution.

“…The dog has a simple, very acidic gut, typical of a carnivore, designed to process large quantities of meat and bone. At it's most acidic (during digestion) the dog's gut can reach below pH1.0, equivalent to car battery acid, a level it can remain at for 5 hours (Itoh et al. 1980, Sagawa et al., 2009). Youngberg et al. (1985) found the average gastric pH of dogs ranges from pH1.5 ranging to pH2.1 a couple of hours after consuming a meal, when gastric juices would be in full flow. At this sort of acidity a meat and bone is rapidly broken down, often reduced to chyme within an hour (Lonsdale, 2001). Furthermore, this acidic environment is inhospitable to all but the most specialized of microbiology, protecting healthy scavenging dogs from common meat-borne pathogens such as Salmonella and E. coli. Great quantities of mucous protect the dog from doing itself damage. Post-digestion the stomach will abruptly change to neutral, presumably to neutralise the corrosive acid before it hits the duodenum and intestines that are less equipped to withstand the corrosive power of a pH1 acid broth. Data on dry-fed dogs cite the pH of food bolus to rise to a near neutral pH6-7 in the duodenum (Itoh et al., 1980; Sagawa et al., 2009) but as high as pH 8.3 by the time it reaches the colon. There is little data available for dogs fed a fresh meat meal. It is well established omnivores have less acidic digestive juices than carnivores due to their larger inclusion of alkaline-forming legumes and vegetables. Carnivores on the other hand spend their time eating protein and fat and the more protein in a meal, the lower the stomach pH (Carpentier et al. 1988) [note from Jane: an abstract was unavailable for this study but I did find this study that referenced it.]…

And yes, absolutely the lower stomach acids of carnivores is enough to kill the hefty majority of ingested nasties. Hence even dry fed dogs can dig up a 3-month-old bone and pick away to no great harm…”

The Role of the Canine Gut Microbiome and Metabolome in Health and Gastrointestinal Disease
- Frontiers in Veterinary Science
Rachel Pilla and Jan S. Suchodolski
Study on the role of canine gut biome in health and gastrointestinal disease, where authors hypothesize that coprophagia inoculates the gut of the stool-eating dogs.

Fecal Microbiota Transplantation in Puppies with Canine Parvovirus Infectio
- Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine
Giorgio Q. Pereira, Lucas A. Gomes, Iago S. Santos, Alice F. Alfieri, J. S. Weese, Marcio C. Costa

Transcript

Jane Messineo Lindquist: I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist.

Mark Lindquist: And I'm Mark Lindquist.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: And this is.

Mark Lindquist: Madcap Radio. Hi, Jane.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Hi, Mark.

Mark Lindquist: How are you?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: I'm doing great. How about you?

Mark Lindquist: I'm doing good. Good.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: We are gathered here together today to talk about ... eating stool.

Mark Lindquist: We have to gather for that.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: We are gathering. We're gathering. Well, you know, because it's a big deal. It's a big deal. Dogs eating poop.

Mark Lindquist: I would I would agree with that, I guess. I don't know.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Yeah. It causes a lot of consternation. There is a multimillion dollar industry.

Mark Lindquist: In eating poop.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: In preventing eating poop. All those additives for the foods and all the behavior modifications and I'm going to plot spoil it for you.

Mark Lindquist: Does that mean I can leave early?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Yes, if you want. Anybody can leave early if they want. But here's what I'm going to tell you two things. Number one, stool eating dogs is a completely normal and natural behavior and might even be indicative of some positive temperament traits. Number one. And number two, the only proven way to stop stool eating is to pick up the stool.

But, you know, as much as stool eating is not a behavioral problem. It is a problem. It's an emotional problem.

Mark Lindquist: Well, I didn't know dogs have emotions.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Well, they do have emotions, but it's not their emotional problem. It's the human's emotional problem. Oh, because people just have this incredible revulsion, and I don't blame them. It's gross ...

Mark Lindquist: I was going to say I would.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Right? Yeah.

Mark Lindquist: I agree with that.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: It's gross. But so what I want to talk about is some of the evolutionary reasons why we think dogs eat stool. And my hope is that, you know, listen, I don't advocate accepting that your dog eats poop or, you know, letting your dog kiss you after he eats poop. But I hope at least it takes away some of the crazy emotion that people have about it.

Because, you know, I was reading this study and we're going to talk a lot more about the study. And they were talking about the fact that apparently some dog owners resort to euthanasia or request euthanasia for dogs. Yes, Seriously? Yes I'm telling you. I'm telling you what? Because we just have, you know, issues with defecation. I mean, we're very, you know, funny about that as humans.

Mark Lindquist: I would agree the whole defecation thing. That's why we have bad days.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Yeah.

Mark Lindquist: There's nothing better than a clean butt I mean, you know.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Well, dogs don't really have to worry about that because they don't have butt cheeks, so they just go.

Mark Lindquist: That's true.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: And with any luck, there's another dog eating it as it's coming out.

Mark Lindquist: Oh, my gosh. I know. Okay.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Anyway, listen, here's the thing. I'm also going to cut to the chase about what you can do about stool eating in dogs and none of the food additives work. So this study and it's a great study.

Mark Lindquist: Well, that's kind of going out on a limb.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: No, it's not going out on a limb.

Mark Lindquist: Are you sure about that? What if somebody takes you on with this?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Well, by all means, apropos of our last podcast, which is being wrong, I would be excited if it turned out that there was something, you know, new that they found out about this. But one of the things that they talk about in the study and I'm going to tell you the name and I will put it up on the show page and I hope I can pronounce this is the paradox of canine con specific coprophagia.

Pro co-pro-phagia I guess is how you say it. It's not a word that you, you know, bandy about a lot.

Mark Lindquist: What's the word mean?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: It means poop eating. Poop eating. Yeah. And corn specific means the same species. So they're talking about the paradox of canines eating dog canine poop. And it's by Benjamin Hart is the lead author on that. So I will put that up.

Mark Lindquist: Was a study done through university or was it done?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Cell Biology School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California Davis. Wow. Great. Yeah. So it's a great study. And, you know, they start the study by saying that it's interesting that it's such a big topic, but there's been almost no research really done on it. So they put together a survey of 2500 dog owners and they found that 25% of the dogs eat stool.

And so they wanted to test the theory, for instance, that it's a dietary deficiency. Sometimes they'll say dogs eat poop because there's a dietary deficiency, that it can be behaviorally modified. They wanted to test whether this, you know, the food additives work. So they tested or they had people test and they took a survey on the top 11 food additive deterrents.

And the results were the top performer had a 2% reduction.

Mark Lindquist: Top performer being the additives?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Yeah, the top performing additive show had a 2% reduction in stool eating. Most of them were zero. Most of them had no effect at all. But yet people keep buying them.

And then they they looked at behavior modification. And I'm going to read you the list of things that people tried to do. Chase away from stools, reward the successful command of leave it alone lace stools with pepper punished by electronic or sound emitting collar.

And the reported success rate was 1 to 2%, except for leave it alone, which was slightly higher at 4%. Now

Mark Lindquist: Wait a minute. So you're telling me that the electronic shock.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Mmm.

Mark Lindquist: Was less of a deterrent than the verbal commands?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: That's correct.

Mark Lindquist: That's so that's a pretty strong drive for a dog to overcome that and still eat the stool.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Right. And the hypothesis of the the researchers is that if, if it is a behavioral abnormality as opposed to a natural behavior, it should be susceptible to behavior modification fairly easily. And it's not it's really persistent. Now, to be fair, they cited another study where the owners had used citronella collars to deter dogs from eating stool and in that study, it was 14 dogs as opposed to 2500 dogs.

But of those 14 Labrador retrievers, they had an 83% reduction in stool eating by using the citronella collar. However, they did not track long term results. You know, the thing about punishment is that it works, but you have to keep it up. So maybe a citronella collar or or saying no or leave it would work. But you would have to be out there every time the dog's anywhere near poop to maintain that nexus between the poop and the verses.

Mark Lindquist: We'll just pick it up if you're going to spend that amount of time.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: I mean, that is the only thing that has been shown to work is just clean up the poop, you know, clean it up.

But, you know, that kind of again, that. And then that brings us back to the question of like, why are people so obsessed with trying to stop it? Because I think the problem is that, I mean, you have to stand in there anyway and yell at the dog or tell the dog not to eat it or, you know, see the dog so you can hit the shock collar.

Mark Lindquist: Some advantages of it, though.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Keeps the yard

Mark Lindquist: clean

Jane Messineo Lindquist: It’s a closed system. Yeah, hermetically sealed. But, you know, the thing is that it's because it's like the silent scream, you know, you see that poop, and it's just like, oh, the dog's eating poop. I mean, it's just such an emotional thing for people. And they want ... they don't ... it's not enough that the dog doesn't eat the poop. They don't want the dog to want to eat the poop.

Mark Lindquist: Well, I think that's more of what drives most people is they perceive just, you know, disgusting, disgusting, habit, deviant. It's yeah. It's just really out of the norm for humans. And I can emphasize with that.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Just well, it is out of the norm for humans and we're going to talk about that. We are fundamentally different than dogs. I mean.

Mark Lindquist: You don't say.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Well, our insides are fundamentally different. We are we have an omnivores digestive system. So a dog has a very short digestive system and extremely high stomach acid. And there's a lot of it and it's very acid. In fact, at the point where the dog is digesting food, it goes, one study, said as low as battery acid, like that's how acidic they are.

That's why they can eat carrion. They eat things that are, have been dead for a week and they just gobble it up and it's like delicious aged meat, you know, roadkill. Yeah. They just and they have zero problems with it. And in fact, probably their designed to need some of those probiotics that are in there, you know, so it's not harmful for them.

And in fact, they're designed to eat they're designed to eat this kind of thing. They're designed to eat excrement. They're designed to eat especially any kind of herbivore excrement. They're designed to eat carrion, things that are rotten.

Mark Lindquist: So let me guess. You're going to probably go over the design reason why.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Right? Well, let's just talk about the theories. There's, so there's three big theories about why dogs eat poop.

Mark Lindquist: Jane, we need to have a commercial break here.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Oh, do we need a word from our sponsor?

Mark Lindquist: Yes, we do.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: And who might that be?

Mark Lindquist: That might be Puppy Culture.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Oh, it's us.

Mark Lindquist: It's us. Yeah, it's us.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So I would imagine most people listening probably are familiar with Puppy Culture, but puppyculture.com, the Power...

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Mark Lindquist: Madcap University.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: madcapuniversity.com. Why, you may ask. Madcap University. I mean, why Mark?

Mark Lindquist: Why?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Why, why Mark? Well, because Puppy Culture is puppy rearing viewed through a behavioral lens, right? We didn't go a lot into the nuts and bolts of husbandry and stuff like that, but people keep asking us about it and they want more.

Mark Lindquist: So here we are, we're here.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: We're here to please. And we have now started making courses like real nuts and bolts courses like “How do I get that puppy to nurse that won't nurse” or a course for puppy owners that says, “Well, how do I set up a pen for my puppy?” Like, “What material do I use?” Like the all that stuff that's all in Madcap University in different courses.

Mark Lindquist: Absolutely. It's great.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Right now. It's just me. But, nose work, we're adding some nose work, some nutrition. There's going to be an amazing cast of luminaries teaching there. Yes.

Mark Lindquist: So puppyculture.com.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: And madcapuniversity.com.

So there's three main schools of thought about why dogs eat stool. The first one is just a purely functional mechanical keeping the den area clean, that if there's any kind of stool around the den area it can breed pathogens and, you know, disease. It's dirty. Literally, it's dirty. So they keep it clean. Then there is the school of thought that the reason dogs and wild canids eat stool is to prevent the spread of parasites.

And it's really fascinating because the one thing that they definitely revealed in the study is that almost 90% of the stool eating only happened with fresh stool less than two days old. That dogs in general do not eat stool over two days old. And the researchers in the UC Davis study hypothesize that this is because when the dog shed the parasite eggs in their stool, it takes two days for them to reach an infectious state.

So any time before the two days that they eat it, it's not going to infect them. So they can take it away and dispose of it by eating it before it becomes infectious. If they wait longer than two days after two days, what happens is if they ingested, it will infect them with the parasites and if they like, rub against it, or if it's just in the grass and you know, it gets on them because the stool has spread into the grass and it gets on their fur and then they lick their fur, they will be infected with the parasite. So yeah, it's it's kind of interesting. It's natural parasite control that could serve a really important function.

You were saying something?

Mark Lindquist: Well, I was just going to talk about how, at least for us as breeders, we don't have a problem. In fact, we're excited when the bitch will actually clean her puppies.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Yeah.

Mark Lindquist: And for some reason we don't have a problem with that. But once they ... if that same bitch goes out and eats poo.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Well, but.

Mark Lindquist: Becomes an issue.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: I've mentioned this before that when I see a bitch go out and eat poop, I'm like, Yeah, because I've seen a correlation. And this is just my own observation between bitches that will and will not eat stool and bitches that do and do not want to clean their puppies. Well, like Bijou would not touch poop outside ever. I've never seen her eat poop and darn if she would not clean those puppies. It was really an uphill battle. She finally did in the end, but really very halfheartedly. Whereas the ones that, you know, eat poop, they have no problem with cleaning those puppies. I mean, even my males, you know, even our males have cleaned puppies.

Mark Lindquist: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he is good at that.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Mm. So you know, that's another, that's another school of thought then the third school of thought is that they are colonizing their gut microbiota by eating the stool of the other dogs. So again, you know, you just have to take it away from, you know, your gut, no, no pun intended reaction that it's disgusting and it's like the ultimate fermented food to them.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: I mean, they are literally inoculating their gut with whatever's in all the rest of the other dogs.

Mark Lindquist: I noticed that they do quite a bit of sniffing prior to sitting down and having their gourmet meal. Oh, do they? Is there a reason for that? Theo does that. I've noticed.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: He's checking it out.

Mark Lindquist: He's checking to see if it.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Who knows. He's probably. Yeah, reading, reading all that. It's like it's like a health status bulletin. He's going to read the whole thing and then just dispose of it.

Mark Lindquist: Yep.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So, you know, I think that is an interesting, the gut colonization thing is an interesting thing, too. And, you know, just by the by, they have used fecal transplants in parvo cases where puppies have parvo and they have found that it helps reduce the amount of time that they have diarrhea. Wow. Right. I will put that study up, too, because that was interesting.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: So those are your big three things, you know, kind of schools of thought about the evolutionary reasons why dogs might do that. And I think probably it's all of the above. I mean, I think that it you know, it's an amazing behavior, actually, that that really serves the dogs well.

Mark Lindquist: Well, you know, now you have a different look at it when you see your dog out there eating stool.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Right.

Mark Lindquist: I mean.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Okay. Right. I'm not saying that we want to embrace it. You know, we don't. Because the truth is that, yes, we could get sick from a dog that has feces in its mouth, licking our face. And, you know, it's distasteful at the very least. So I'm not saying, oh, it's natural. Let them do it. No, just pick it up.

You know, pick up the poop. And if you have a lot of dogs, I understand it's a challenge. I don't particularly like dogs licking my face for this reason. But, you know, it's natural. It's not it's not like there's anything wrong with the dog. And more than anything else, I want people to feel differently about it, not accept it, but just not be repulsed to the point where it's damaging their feelings about the dog because that's common.

I mean, people really can feel have negative feelings about their dog and it can hurt their bond.

Mark Lindquist: And I've heard, you know, or have read that people feel it's a tremendously driven by behavior, that they think that there's something wrong with their dog constantly eating stool.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Hmm. Well, that and that is really the whole point of this. And that was the point of the UC Davis study that people think it's a deviant behavior, that it's a problem, you know, some kind of compulsive behavior problem. And they went through all the, you know, they surveyed for separation anxiety, excessive barking aggression, compulsive behaviors. They did not find any correlation between stool eating and any other behavior problem.

You know, and another behavioral thing just this is a little bit of a sidebar, but super interesting about dogs eating poop is I was watching a Trish McConnell lecture and she talked about the fact that there's a theory that one of the ways that dogs became domesticated, and now this is going to be really gross, is that when humans started living in agricultural settlement, like, they started settling as opposing to be as opposed to being hunter gatherers and wandering, you know, what's going to be on the outside of that settlement poop, human poop.

And the dogs would come and eat the poop. And there's some people who hypothesize that that could have been really the start of domestication of dogs.

Mark Lindquist: Wow.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Right. So we really bond over poop with dogs.

So, you know, another thing that people often think with dogs eating stool is that it's a dietary deficiency, that they're lacking something in their diet and they're trying to get it by eating feces. And this study, again, 2500 dogs eating all different kinds of diets, zero correlation between what they eat in their diet and stool eating.

Mark Lindquist: Meaning to say that their diets were diverse from kibble excuse me, kibble to fresh raw cooked everything.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Everything in between and no, no correlation. So you know that that check that box off. It's not. Wow, it's not a dietary thing, right? Because that's another thing that you just kind of feel bad like, oh, my dog missing something. They're eating poop.

Mark Lindquist: Yeah, but I would. I would. Yeah, I would absolutely. I would think that. What am I doing wrong?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: The only correlations they found, which this is pretty interesting. Well, the first one is greedy eating, you know, gulping their food, really stabbing it and gulping their food. Not resource guarding, though, just greedy eating. No, no correlation with resource guarding only greedy eating, which is maybe not surprising, I guess, you know.

Mark Lindquist: Humans do it.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Well, I'm saying, like the dogs were just were voracious eaters and they would, you know.

Mark Lindquist: Were there are the other dogs around that they were afraid that the other...

Jane Messineo Lindquist: I don't know the answer to that. I mean, obviously there was a correlation to multiple dogs in the household. That makes sense because they have more opportunity to. But it also kind of points to it being a little bit more of a pack behavior, because if there's more dogs, they're kind of, you know, passing around their gut biome, keeping their pack clean.

You know, it's that actually stands to reason that that that would go more towards an evolutionary reason.

Mark Lindquist: So a dog that has parasites or a dog that is sick and defecates and then another dog eats it, is there a chance that the dog that’s eating the stool could get any of ... diseases.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Yeah, that's a good question. You know, the study actually broke it down into some detail about the kinds of parasites and pathogens that are found in stool and the infectiousness of it, you know, over time. So, you know, rather than giving a recitation of all that, I would leave it to people, you know.

Mark Lindquist: As a summary, is there is there any health benefits for the eater?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Oh, you mean kind of like homeopathic?

Mark Lindquist: Yeah, I mean, I know. Is there benefits to it or they don't know about that.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Yeah, it really again, it really hasn't been studied that much, but they did find a correlation. And this is interesting in between certain breeds ... Shelties, Shelties way overrepresented, whereas 25% of the overall population of dogs eat stool, 41% of Shelties do it now and then here's the kicker Poodles. They combine standard, miniature and toy. Not one Poodle, not one eight stool.

Mark Lindquist: How many how many poodles? You know? Oh, I wonder if I could.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Know how how many?

Mark Lindquist: If I want a poodle.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: If I want a Poodle? 29 Poodles.

Mark Lindquist: And not one.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Not one. 27 Shelties. 41% of them. Wow. Yeah. Pretty crazy.

Mark Lindquist: Great to hear some feedback from the Sheltie people to find out.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: If that's a thing.

Mark Lindquist: If it's a thing or maybe and maybe they can shed light ...

Jane Messineo Lindquist: And the Poodle people I'd like to hear if there's a Poodle person. Well, I guess you know, I guess again, it points to the fact that it's some sort of innate genetic behavior that maybe we've bred out of some breeds or not, you know, but it's it's there. It's there.

Mark Lindquist: Yeah, but it's not behavioral.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: No, it's not a behavioral abnormality. It is behavioral like they do it. Right, but it's normal dog behavior, healthy dog behavior, as a matter of fact.

Mark Lindquist: And they have not look to say that there is a situation that by them eating that could make them sick, which would be which probably everybody would think would be an issue.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Right? No, but no. And for all those reasons that we talked about with the whole way that the dog, dogs, intestine and digestive system. Right. Yeah. You know, but it's so interesting because I was having a conversation with somebody and we are talking about food and she said, you know, I used to really worry about what I fed my dog.

And I mean, this is a prominent, you know, well-respected, intelligent person. She said, you know, I used to really worry about what I fed my dog. And then, you know, I just noticed my dog, that dogs will eat, roadkill, will eat any kind of - they’ll eat poop. I mean, so, you know, I can just feed them the cheapest kibble and, you know, corn doesn't matter.

They they eat, they eat dog poop, you know, they eat deer poop. They can eat this. And I said, well, you know, I think that's just a very like species centric view, because to you, deer poop is pure garbage, but to a dog, it's a delicacy. It's good for them. It's inoculating them with whatever was in the deer stomach.

They're getting all the vegetables predigested, which the dogs don't have the saliva to digest the vegetables to break down the cellulose they don't have their intestines are too fast and efficient to to eat vegetables. So they are basically letting the deer do all the work with, you know, chew it up, digest it. They're letting the herbivore do the work for them of eating.

I mean, this is great food to them. So, you know, we tend to be very, you know, like species centric. Like we can only see it through our own lens. And that that can be, first of all, damage emotionally how we feel about our dogs because we perceive it as gross. And number two, you know, ultimately make bad choices for our dogs based on our prejudices.

Mark Lindquist: So is the eating of stool go across all with dogs, across other animals? Like will they eat a week old deer poop?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Well, that's interesting. Yeah, they didn't study that again. You know, in my experience and having had dogs and horses most of my life, yeah, it would be mostly fresh horse manure. They're not going to go over to the manure. I've never in my entire life seen a dog go to the manure pile and, you know, dig down into it and start eating rotten manure.

I mean, they're always after the fresh ....

Mark Lindquist: Fresh stuff.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: The fresh droppings. Yeah, but again, that's just anecdotal. My, my experience.

Mark Lindquist: Wow.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Hmm.

Mark Lindquist: Fascinating. Yes, I have a different look at when they go out in the morning and eat poo now. Mm hmm. I will have to reevaluate.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: You're going have to put on your rubber boots and get out there and pick it out.

Mark Lindquist: Pick it up. Well, hey, I mean, so that's. It's good for them. Yeah, else let them do the vacuuming for me. Why not? Why not? Well, or buy five or six Shelties. There you go. I can rent them.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Rent some Shelties.

Mark Lindquist: Rent some Shelties, have them come over once a week.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Yeah. That no, they'd have to come over every two days, every other day.

Mark Lindquist: That's true.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Invite them over.

Mark Lindquist: Depending how many dogs you have.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Yeah.

Mark Lindquist: Wow. Yeah. Well, very interesting subject that you brought up. I have no idea what you know, made you decide out of all the topics of everything that we've discussed that you wanted to talk about dogs eating, poop, did something happen?

Jane Messineo Lindquist: You know, I found the study, and I. I just was like, wow, it's something that has sort of always been there in the back of my mind as like, oh, an annoyance, an annoying sort of problem that I couldn't solve and I didn't have a solution. And I think the thing that resonates for me about this topic is how in Puppy Culture, again and again, I'm faced with the concept of just let's not try and solve problems that don't need to be solved if it's developmental or natural.

You know, let's just not call it a problem and make a big deal out of it. Let's just, you know, work around it, manage it, and either wait for the animal to grow out of it or manage it. And this is a perfect example of that, something that is perceived as a problem, which, you know, guess what? You don't really have to solve it. You can’t solve it.

Mark Lindquist: Well, it's nice to know. I mean, it makes it.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Liberating.

Mark Lindquist: When you look at it again, there's some benefit to it which makes it makes it view you view it very differently. Now, at least for me.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: It doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth.

Mark Lindquist: Oh, touch or however they do that. Well, I have to say, it's pretty interesting conversation.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: All right.

Mark Lindquist: Dinner topic. No, I wouldn't say. Well.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: If you're a dog.

Mark Lindquist: That's true. Dinner was good talking to you Jane.

Jane Messineo Lindquist: Good talking to you.

Mark Lindquist: Alright.

28 Comments

Jo Lynn link

12/6/2022 03:00:12 pm

I had a young dog returned to me a few years ago and one of the chief complaints from that buyer about her was that she ate poo. I ended up keeping her. She's a lovely dog that went on to become my first Grand Champion and was a wonderful mother. Jo

Jane Lindquist

12/6/2022 06:05:59 pm

Wow, that's like the ultimate lemonade from lemons story. Except it's poop so maybe poopade? LOL

Peggy

12/6/2022 03:28:03 pm

Thank you for this podcast. I have 3 female Labs and 100% of them eat poop. They all prefer their own if they can get it before I scoop it up! One of them has had puppies, and she keeps them very clean! She will even eat the puppy poop after they have been weaned!

I do clean up after the puppies, but if she is playing with them and they go potty, she will clean it right up!

I had worried that eating poop could hurt the puppies when she’s pregnant or nursing, but now I will worry a little less about that.

I’m still going to make every effort to clean up the poop before they eat it. I don’t like their breath smelling like poop!

12/6/2022 06:05:23 pm

Glad you got some reassurance and yeah poop breath is the worst lol

Deborah Thompson link

12/6/2022 03:28:45 pm

We have a Great White Pyrenees and a Standard Poodle, along with 2 Irish Wolfhounds and a Saint Bernard that all live in the house. They have access to 10 fenced acres - we feed them Forza10 dry kibble but have noticed that the Pyrenees will eat her poop just as soon as it is out - none of the others do. Now we do notice the poodle eating grass, but never poop. Interesting podcast!

12/6/2022 06:03:45 pm

Yes, same here - no way we can get to all of it but I have never been a fan of dogs licking me in any way lol. Interestingly, I enjoy cats licking my eyebrows but not dogs. I guess because cats' tongues are pretty dry in comparison to dogs

12/6/2022 06:07:06 pm

and PS thanks for writing in on the Poodle - interesting!

LaDonna Norman

12/6/2022 04:07:27 pm

Thank you for this! I've racked my brain trying to figure out what it was I was not including in my dog's diet and now I can relax! I have 2 doodles - one is 3/4 poodle & 1/4 Australian Sheppard - the other is a 50/50 mix. They both eat poop...lol!

12/6/2022 06:02:10 pm

I feel you! Such a relief to know it's not something we're doing wrong!

Tracy Buck

12/6/2022 05:36:08 pm

Long time Sheltie owner with hundreds of rescue Shelties fostered over the past 25 years, many Shelties do eat stool, so 41% seems like an accurate value. They especially like 'poopsicles'. It is also true that Shelties as a breed have an extremely high preponderance of developing gallbladder mucocele - which impacts the GI system. I have to wonder if there is a correlation. Incidentally, my 6 year old daily stool eater was just diagnosed with an early mucocele. It will be interesting to see if that behavior reduces with the treatment of this condition.

12/6/2022 06:01:36 pm

Wow, that's interesting and you sent me to look up mucocele. Thanks for writing in, I learned something new, and I would be interested to hear if the behavior does reduce after treatment of the mucocele.

Ginny Baxter

12/6/2022 08:22:41 pm

Jane and Mark,

Very interesting information, thank you! I agree with you that the only way to stop poop eating is to clean it up. I just have a very hard time beating one of my dogs (who shall go nameless, but she has always been the naughty one) to the “prize”! She and I will both see one of my other dogs start to go, and we both end up running towards that dog, with me, pooper scooper in hand, yelling at her to leave it! She also will eat her own stool and is very sneaky, purposely going to the furthest point in the yard, and behind a bush to do it! And the theory that eating stool may be the dog trying to fix its own GI system is interesting as many homeopathic vets routinely recommend fecal transplants for dogs with serious GI issues, with good results.

I think I will get a poodle! ;-) Happy Holidays!

Anna

12/6/2022 08:57:03 pm

Thanks for the information on dogs eating herbivore poop! My goldendoodle absolutely loves it, but carefully avoids eating her own poo.

12/8/2022 10:31:53 pm

You are very welcome, and fortunate that your dog inherited the Poodle gene when it comes to poop lol

Linda Hoof link

12/7/2022 11:01:44 pm

I loved this podcast! I have standard poodles and toy poodles. Toy poodles emphatically eat poop! My standards have never eaten it.

12/8/2022 10:33:08 pm

Very interesting...we've had a few Poodle owners write in that they have poop-eaters. Would be super interesting to do a deep comparison between breeds!

Allan Gates

12/8/2022 09:47:06 am

We have had multiple standard poodles in our home for decades. I cannot remember a single instance in which one ate dog poop. But for a few of them fresh goat droppings were irresistible.

12/8/2022 10:34:00 pm

Very interesting - we have had a few people write in that their Poodles eat poop but it does seem to be the exception rather than the rule

Susan Shaver

12/8/2022 10:28:23 pm

My 13 year old Standard Poodle has never eaten poop. But I reed him totally raw. For breakfast he had a chicken leg quarter bone in, and blueberries. Last night he had lamb and buttered steamed broccoli with plain organic yogurt, Etc. I think poop eating has to do with nutrition. Whenever I house sit a dog that is on kibble they always eat poop.
I was shocked to see one of their owners and then kiss the owner on the mouth.

12/8/2022 10:35:06 pm

Ooooh, yeah, that's rough lol. I just am not a big mouth kisser with dogs...;)

Pascale Smith

12/8/2022 11:48:15 pm

I had a Borzoi who started doing it, and seemed to have taught it to a few more young ones. The thing is, they would ONLY eat it if the weather dropped to under 10 degrees F. If they weren't poopsicles, they weren't interested. Thankfully, none of my current Borzois have this habit. Thanks for the episode!

Pascale Tolan SMITH

12/8/2022 11:50:04 pm

Come to think of it, the kibble-fed dogs were the ones who would do it. The raw-fed dogs have never eaten poopsicles.

Chris

12/9/2022 11:15:43 am

Now That You Are A Friend I Should Eat Your Poop. When I brought home a Bull Terrier puppy 18 months ago my 9 year old Bull Terrier announced that he hated her and wanted nothing to do with her. Fast forward a year and a half he reversed his decision and they ADORE each other. The baby never ate poop but as soon as he accepted her she started eating his poop. She actually doesn’t seem to like it much and consumes it hesitantly and out of a seeming obligation. Fascinating/disgusting

12/11/2022 11:48:20 pm

If you ever decide to write a novel that MUST be the title...

Mary Courtenay

12/10/2022 12:52:57 pm

Thank you for this! My pooch is a Chinese Shar Pei ( no mix ) 1 yrs old she is raw fed and has recently discovered deer poop that randomly visit our back yard during the night my question/concern with this is do I need to worry that she might pick up some kind of parasite and can she gain weight with the added ‘ nourishment ‘ as she is at her maximum weight so far she isn’t interested in her own poop or that of other dogs freaks me right out to see her chowing down on a pile of deer poop!

Claudia Moreau

12/15/2022 11:01:35 pm

I have a litter that is almost 4 weeks old and I noticed that they are eating their own poop!!! so early can this behavior start????

M Goodchild

1/2/2023 09:11:07 am

Thank you for this very informative podcast. I am a Sheltie owner, currently raising my 4th. None of my previous Shelties were poop eaters so I was totally grossed out when my pup began eating his stool. I tried the food additives and putting pepper on the stool but the only thing that works 100% is to pick it up. I go with him every potty outing and he is trained to “leave it” and come to me immediately after he goes to be rewarded with a treat, but he will return to the feast first opportunity if I haven’t picked it up. So it’s easier on my psyche to just pick it up. What I found interesting was the correlation with “greedy eating” which definitely applies to this pup and none of my previous Shelties.

Tracy Grider

5/2/2023 01:40:16 pm

I have your poodle exception! I have a miniature poodle that is my yard vacuum!

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