Why Does My Labrador Eat Poop: Various medical conditions can cause your Labrador Retriever to eat poop, so once they are excluded, the behavior needs to be addressed by you. Eating poop is believed to be self-rewarding, making it difficult to change.
Ensure that your yard is always free of animal waste.
Immediately pick up your Labrador Retriever’s stool after they have defecated. Your Lab should not be allowed to eat its feces if they defecate during or soon after. If at all possible, keep your dog leashed when defecating. When their attention is drawn to the poop, remind them to look at you (teach them to look at me). Once they’re interested, reward them with something tasty to maintain their interest, and dispose of the poop as soon as possible. “Leave it” can also be an effective command at this point.
Why Does My Labrador Retrievers Eat Poop?
It is undeniable that Labrador Retrievers are curious animals. Some Labs are particular about what they eat, but others eat anything they can get their mouths on. Veterinarians refer to coprophagia as the consumption of feces. Dogs who exhibit coprophagia often appear to have a behavioral disorder; however, it may be a symptom of something else.
Once medical causes for coprophagia have been eliminated, a behavioral diagnosis can be made. Having ruled out potential medical issues, a veterinarian can formulate a behavioral treatment plan for coprophagia.
Several factors can explain these behaviors. Your Labrador Retriever may begin eating its poop or the poop of other animals if they have medical issues or bad behavior habits.
It is important to work with your veterinarian to determine the likely cause of your Lab eating feces before you begin treatment. Among the main reasons older Labrador Retrievers might eat their poop are boredom, loneliness, anxiety, stress, or a need for attention. Fortunately, most puppies outgrow poop eating, but some Labradors may continue to do so into adulthood.
Behavioural Causes For Eating Poop
In most cases, coprophagia is a behavioral issue that resolves by the pup reaching adulthood. Labrador Retrievers of all ages may develop coprophagia for a variety of reasons, including:
| Incorrect training: Attempting to toilet train a Labrador Retriever by sticking its nose into its poop after it has messed in the house is incorrect training. Sometimes, this conditions your Lab to being interested in eating it. |
| Curiosity: In the beginning, puppies and dogs might exhibit poo-eating behavior because it attracts their owners’ attention. |
| Innate behavior: Labradors often clean, groom, and eat the feces of their young puppies. |
| Imitating other dogs: If female dogs clean and ingest puppy poop during nesting, puppies may mimic their mother’s behavior or mimic behaviors similar to their mother’s. |
By involving veterinary practitioners and owners in early intervention and consistent treatment, coprophagia can be prevented, and issues contributing to it can be corrected.
Medical Causes
| Parasites | Digestive enzyme deficiencies |
| Deficits in vitamins and minerals, as well as malnutrition | Poorly digested foods or underfeeding |
| Thyroid disease | Cushing’s disease |
| Diabetes Medicines that contain steroids |
To determine whether medical problems cause coprophagia, your Labrador must undergo a physical examination, a diet evaluation, and stool consistency and frequency tests. As well as a stool and blood test, parasite testing should be conducted if needed.
Why Does My Labrador Retriever Eat Other Animal Poops?
Do you have a Labrador Retriever that eats the poop of other animals, such as cats? Dogs may consume poop from other animals because they are scavengers. When our dogs eat things we don’t expect them to eat, such as garbage in bins, we may consider them strange and unsanitary. In many cases, dogs are drawn to the taste, smell, and texture of food – regardless of how we perceive them.
The feces of cats and other animals can sometimes appeal to your Labrador Retriever. It has been found that dogs are consistently attracted to the smell of poop when exploring their surroundings. Dogs may not perceive poop as a bad smell since they interpret smell differently from humans. Consequently, if your Labrador Retriever finds poo appealing, he could eat it.
Best Ways to Stop Your Labrador Retriever From Eating Poop
What not to do
When you punish your Labrador Retriever for eating poop, they might feel compelled to eat poop when you’re away. You won’t have the chance to handle the problem either because they will become faster at eating poop. After coating stools with taste deterrents, a Labrador Retriever may seem to stop eating stools, but as soon as they find one that wasn’t treated, this behavior may return.
If your Labrador Retriever eats poop, you are likely looking for solutions. If your veterinarian has given your Labrador Retriever a clean bill of health, these tips will come in handy.
Change Your Labrador Retriever’s Diet
Some problems can be solved with a higher-quality diet. If you are experiencing this issue, speak with a nutritionist. Ideally, you want to feed your pet foods that contain high-quality protein and contain no grains, soy, or corn. Several studies have shown that raw food is good for dogs because most stool is waste. Dogs can also be fed canned food because canned food can be digested more easily.
A gradual transition from one food to another over a few days is the best way to make a new diet work for your dog. It is also dangerous to overfeed, as it could cause the meal to be only partially digested. Labrador Retrievers who eat their food too quickly will not digest it as well, so their stools will taste better.
Add Supplements to Your Labrador Retriever’s Food
There is no guarantee these will work for all dogs, but some have reported success. Probiotics and digestive enzymes have been found to reduce the poop-eating habit of dogs in some cases. If there is a vitamin B deficiency, supplements of the vitamin may be recommended. You should consult your veterinarian if you plan to give your dog supplements.
Labrador Retrievers’ food can be added with items such as canned pumpkin, canned pineapple juice, or grated zucchini, but most seem not to benefit from them.
There have also been suggestions to use breath mints, meat tenderizers, and hot sauces to cover their feces, but those solutions seem short-term since the poop-eating habit returns immediately after these remedies are stopped. Furthermore, it is important to note that certain chemicals can harm your Labrador Retriever, so you should consult your veterinarian before beginning any regimen.
Pick Up After Your Labrador Retriever
Using this method is the most effective method to stop your dog from eating poop. Make sure your Labrador Retriever doesn’t eat poop by cleaning up after it! Often we wait for a miracle cure when there is an easy solution right in front of us.
This effective method prevents your Lab from continuously engaging in undesirable behavior. It will become harder to break the habits of your Labrador Retriever if it repeats poop-eating behaviors enough.
Behavior-Modification
If dietary changes recommended by your veterinarian have not made any difference and medical disorders have been ruled out, behavioral modification may also be helpful. To divert your Labrador Retriever’s attention from the poop, you should provide a treat after it has been removed. Soon you will begin to notice a new behavior pattern.
Exercise
You can help your Labrador Retriever cope with emotional stress by getting them plenty of exercise and playtime, cleaning up after them as soon as they poop, and keeping them on a leash, so they don’t eat others’ waste.
Conclusion
When you keep your Labrador Retriever on a leash, you can prevent poop eating and minimize the likelihood of them reenacting unwanted behaviors. The fact that there will be one area where your Lab eliminates the yard will make it easier for you to pick up the poop.
However, management does not address the underlying cause, whether medical conditions or behavioral issues cause it. As a result, there is no best way to stop dogs from eating their poop, but you can prevent them from doing so by using several methods.