Question:
I have two male Westies, ages 6 and 3. They are healthy, happy and look great. No wonder -- they are fed your home-cooked brown rice and lamb diet, an occasional hard-boiled egg, some turkey breast and a variety of vegetables such as raw and cooked carrots, lentils, green beans and mung sprouts. They also get daily Brewer's yeast and garlic tabs. Each dog weighs about 18 pounds. They have a large, fenced-in garden and wooded area where they get plenty of exercise chasing squirrels, chipmunks and each other.
The only problem I have is they became coprophagic about a year ago. I have tried every remedy suggested on the Internet, in library books, by two local vets and mail-order catalogs as well as a tablespoon of plain, organic, low-fat yogurt you suggested in a recent column. Nothing has stopped them from recycling. I clean up after them as fast as I can, but they continue to get ahead of me. I am truly at my wits' end and hope that you can suggest a more effective remedy.
C.Z.D., Fairfax, Va Nov 08, 2009
Answer:
Your happy, healthy Westies may belong to that legion of dogs who have no dietary/digestive reason to engage in coprophagia and for which there is no cure. They are simply cleaning up after themselves. One reader, in her battle against coprophagia, decided to stop picking up her dog's poop in the backyard and simply ignored her dog. After a few weeks, the dog stopped cleaning up after itself. However, as soon as the owner started picking up the poop, the dog became coprophagic until the woman ignored the droppings and only removed them when the dog was out of sight.
In case this is not purely psychological/behavioral, put your dogs on a course of good-quality probiotics like PetGuard or Probios. These have helped many dogs like yours and also help dogs with more serious digestive and other health problems, like allergies. Some dogs also like to eat dirt/soil, and your dogs could be lacking in essential trace minerals, a deficiency of which could lead to coprophagia and pica (eating soil and other materials). So give them a daily multi-mineral tablet containing calcium, magnesium, zinc, selenium, etc. One-third of a daily human dose every other day should be safe and effective.
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