A Little History First
Having bred shelties for many years, I was used to watching the occasional dog enjoy eating poop. I had heard that as a breed, shelties have a higher number of poop eaters than the general canine population. But let me tell you, the cotons I now own had them beat, hands down.
There is no delicate way of describing it. They would all crowd around any dog in the process of producing one of their favorite treats, to see who could grab it before it even hit the ground. That was true dedication at an Olympic level.
I had read a gazillion articles on reasons why dogs do what they do with poop. Some of the reasons didn’t really ring true for me. Quite honestly, most articles online sound like they just copied from one another. No new answers, no strategies that worked.
A Possible Cause
The one possibility why dogs eat poop that actually made sense to me was because they smell unused nutrients in the feces.The reason the poop has unused nutrients is because the food wasn’t fully, effectively digested.
An extreme of this failure to digest food is called EPI (exocrine pancreatic insufficiency). Dogs with EPI will eat voraciously but lose weight in spite of their appetite. No matter how much they consume, the food is never digested into a form in which they can extract the nutrients. This is caused by an inability to produce pancreatic enzymes. It causes them to literally die of starvation. Their stool is usually “cow patty” consistency, gray color, sometimes greasy. Definitely not normal looking.
What I was seeing was a much less extreme version. The cotons’ feces were all normal color, texture, well formed and expected size. The dogs, while lean, were not exceedingly underweight.
Looking For The Solution
There was a variety of proteins in their raw food diet. I had recently switched from home made to commercial freeze dried raw with no synthetic vitamins or minerals. I didn’t think it was the quality or specific brand of the food they were given. The few changes I made to the food I bought didn’t have any effect on eating poop.
Probiotics were a part of their normal food supplement, so I figured that couldn’t be what was lacking in their diet.
It couldn’t be caloric restrictions because it occurred to me that they were fed almost double the recommended amount for their sizes.
I tried adding vitamin B to their meals but that made no difference in their habit.
Using Enzymes To Stop Your Dog From Eating Poop
I then tried pancreatic enzymes which dogs diagnosed with EPI are given to see if increasing the digestion of the food made any difference. The enzymes can be bought in a variety of forms. I settled for the animal based enzyme powder without any other additional ingredients. I gave the dogs a much lower than normal dose to begin with. If the dogs did have the ability to produce at least some of their own enzymes, I didn’t want to shut that down completely by providing all they needed through artificial means.
This powder gives the dog the three basic enzymes:
- protease breaks down proteins
- amylase digests carbohydrates
- lipase for the fat digestion.
I slowly increased the dose and found in a few weeks the obsession with cleaning up after each other almost gone. The typical dose for dogs with full blown EPI is anywhere from 1/2 – 1 tsp per cup of food. My cotons were getting 1/3 tsp enzyme per cup of food. I increased the dose to 1/2 tsp per cup and reduced the obsession to a rare interest in coprophagia.
Commercial powdered enzymes are either plant based or animal based. I have read that some feel the animal based enzyme will not survive the dog’s gastric acid while plant based will. I did a little experiment using both and I think the animal based is better.
I’ll be tracking the dogs’ weight to see if they start gaining weight now that they are digesting more of the food they are eating.
The proper way to use the enzyme is to apply the powder to any food eaten, moisten the food with warm water, mix well and wait 20 minutes to allow the enzymes to activate and begin the digestive process. Giving it sprinkled dry on the food can cause mouth sores in some dogs.
I switched to the natural version of these enzymes thinking the less processed, the better. Unfortunately, getting a consistent, reliable source of both animal pancreas and tripe hasn’t been possible, so I’m settling on the processed powder.
An interesting side note is that I looked at some of the commercial products for sale to stop poop eating. While the marketing focuses on the herbs that are meant to make the feces unappealing, I noticed some also have the pancreatic enzymes included in the ingredient list.
There are other reasons to add digestive enzymes to your dogs food bowl. You can check out this page to find out more
Eating Poop Eradicated, Peace And Harmony Return
I am happy to report that all of the dogs have only a very rare interest in eating poop now. Which means if there are any accidents in the house, I’m the one that has to clean it up. I guess that’s a good thing…. right?