Yeah, I know… coprophagia is a really disgusting topic, but one I recently had to research because the new pup was picking up some bad habits. While we haven’t quite withstood the test of time — it has only been three days — our results look promising. Googling basically gave us four ideas:

• Feed more — some dogs simply eat poop because they’re hungry.
• Add 4 tablespoons of canned pumpkin to their food bowl — apparently, it tastes good going in, but not so good after having come out the other end.  Just make sure you get the kind that doesn’t have added sugar and spices (most pumpkin pie fillings do).
• Spray fresh poop with hot sauce.
• Immediately remove the temptation — I didn’t like this idea because 1) it really isn’t training the dog to leave it alone and 2) our pup is lightening fast and we only have a 50/50 chance of being able to scoop it up before it’s down the hatch. Also, we won’t be able to watch him when he’s in doggy day care or being boarded, so we decided we’d only fall back to this as a last resort.

It looks like the pumpkin and more frequent feedings (same quantity, but more meals) has solved our problem.  He doesn’t attempt it as often and when he does, he sniffs and might attempt a lick or two, but then backs away and ignores it.  We haven’t had to try the hot-sauce thing, but that will be next if we can’t break the habit with the pumpkin.

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