My hubby and I have 2 dogs. Pepper who is 16 years old, a Schipperkee and "my" dog. Bonnie who is 6 years old, a Blue Lacy and "his" dog.
Bonnie from the day she came to live with us has always had a problem eating stuff that isn't good for her. As a matter of fact...we weren't sure that she was ever going to grow to adult hood with all the stuff that she ingested. One of the worst habits of hers was that she liked to eat "poop". She ate raccoon poop, she ate possum poop, she ate her own poop, she ate human poop (don't ask)...she just likes to eat it.
The proper term for this is coprophagy. There are all kinds of theories on this nasty habit but I don't think that anyone really knows the answer to this...it just is with some dogs.
We were at the Vet's for the various reasons when she was a puppy for all the perdiciments that she seemed to get into and asked the Vet what to do about it. She said that some dogs respond well to the various products on the markets and a lot of dogs just simply grow out of the habit. And that's really what seemed to happen....until I discovered that my hubby wasn't in fact picking up the poop in the yard...he thought that I was....and the ugliness of the situation reared it's ugly head. She was in fact eating it again. And this time....she had a partner in crime...her sibling Pepper!!!! Why my dog at her advanced age would pick up this nasty habit is beyond me but that's the truth of it.
There is not a lot that turns my stomach but this really does. Just the thought makes me really sick.
So I did what every good dog owner does and I went to the Internet to read about this nasty habit and what to do about it. I also ran by Petsmart and picked up some spray that has some sort of bitterness factor in it so that when you spray the poop it doesn't taste good(How could poop taste good?) and they stop eating it or so says the bottle.
I sprayed some freshly laid turds and then later that afternoon Ms. Bonnie ingested it with gusto..lord give me strength.
So back to the Internet to see if maybe there was something I had in my pantry that might help me through this. I'd already tried sprinkling it with jalapeno juice, cayenne pepper and regular pepper to no avail.
I stumbled upon an article about Pumpkin and pineapple juice. This sounded promising because I had both in the pantry and actually I had real pumpkin in the freezer.
I've decided to try the pumpkin first.
So what you do is put a couple of teaspoons of the pumpkin in the dogs bowl and mix with food when you feed them and it's supposed to make poop taste bad and it breaks the cycle and they stop doing it. It should be 100% pumpkin or pumpkin puree not pumpkin pie mix.
So I started today, they got a dose at lunch time and I'll put more in at supper time. We'll hopefully see how this goes. Keep your fingers crossed and lets hope this works.
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