Oh god, how embarrassing is it when you are with family or friends and your beloved Sausage is in the garden and then eats his own, or worse his play dates, poop!!!
WHY?????? It’s so disgusting! Why does he do that?
Well here at Coots we have a few poop eaters! Sad but true and it never fails to astound us!
There are several theories why they do this. It’s normal behaviour believe it or not and over 20% of all dogs do it!
I’ve heard so many people say that they do it because they are deficient of something in their diet. Honestly I don’t believe this to be true. Well, certainly not in the case of my girls. I believe my girls like it! It taste good! They like the texture and the smell and it’s actually down to the quality diet that they are fed! They only eat each others, never anyone else’s whilst on a walk, which I have seen other dogs do.
The UK Kennel Club recently wrote an article about this and gave 5 reasons;
Boredom
Hunger – if there isn’t anything else available, well beggars can’t be choosers eh?!
They get some nutritional value from undigested matter
It’s behaviour they learnt from their mom
They have a medical condition
We are always humanising everything we see and do with our dogs.we must not do this.Think about it…….what’s the first thing a dog does when he/ she meets a new dog at the park? Sniffs it’s bum! Yup that’s where all the info is that is required to know, who are you? What are you? Do I like you? When your sausage eats another dogs poop, this is no different. He is able to know who the maker is! It’s disgusting I know but he is able gather info about what they’ve been eating. It smells gross to us but delicious to them! They can even detect undigested fats and proteins. Remember your Sausage explores the world with his mouth and this is just another way that he/she is exploring the world!
So next time you see your Sausage or another dog out and about embarrassingly eating poop – now you know! It’s a delicious tasty snack !!!
