Why Dogs Eat Poop

Have you ever wondered why dogs eat poop? Even though it seems pretty disgusting, and might make you feel sick to your stomach, it is actually a common habit of many dogs. About 16% of dogs eat poop (Hart 1). Coprophagia, the term for poop eating, is very common in dogs and can be caused by medical, behavioral, and instinctual reasons.

One explanation why dogs eat their poop is because of possible medical reasons. For example, a dog might eat poop because have a medical condition like, diabetes. Diabetes is a “silent disease” that can make your dog eat it’s poop because it is hungrier than usual. Another medical disease that can cause coprophagia is thyroid disease. Thyroid disease affects the thyroid hormone which is in your dog 's neck. This type of hormone plays a huge role in your dog’s metabolism. If a dog has hyperthyroidism or elevated thyroid, this can boost a dog 's metabolism or hunger to make the dog want to eat its own waste. A possible medication that can affect your dog’s appetite are steroids. This medication has a known side effect to increase appetite which can cause

One way to deter coprophagia is to make sure to keep your dog’s area clean and make sure that the dog has lots of toys to play with to keep his mind off of eating his dung. By giving a dog the attention they need this should help stop the dog from eating poop or at least minimize it. Also, make sure that when walking a dog to keep them on a leash. “This will prevent them from eating the stool of other dogs that are left lying around in the streets,” this could be deadly to them because, “ some parasites and illnesses can be transmitted through stool”(Nelson 3). Another way that can help is by providing a dog raw, whole, and varied diets, which can provide them with proper nutrients. Even though there are many fixes to coprophagia the success rate is only about 4% (Hart