Scientists call dog eating its own or others feces caprophagy.It is required to inspect possible reason of caprophagy of your dog. So let's examine each case step by step.
1) Lack of nutrients in dog feeding.
The most frequent cases of dog eating feces happen with young,
growing dogs. This bad dog habit may stop itself with age, but it
does not mean that you may do nothing.
Analyse if your dog gets enough of required minerals, vitamins,
micro- and macro-nutrients in its diet. If you feed your dog with
a natural food add many food additives variety of which you will
find at many pet shops and veterinary pharmacies.
If you find it difficult to control balance of natural dog
feeding, then it would be much healthier for a dog to eat dry
ready-made food, that contains all required additives. it should
be noted, that transferring from natural to ready-made feeding
should be gradual, within a week. And use dog food of premium
quality.
2) Attraction of owner's attention.
Surprisingly, but very often a dog starts eating feces or dog a
crap in the house for the reason of lack of owner's attention. The
point is that even punishing a dog is showing of attention to a
dog, that is so asked by the pet. Often catching of poop by dog
and running from owner is perceived by a dog as a game "Catch
me!". This way we unaware of being involved and supporting bad
behavior of a dog. Sometimes a dog eats its feces repeating the
owner's actions of taking its poop in walking.
3) Maternity behavior of a dog. Eating of feces by a lactating dog is a normal behavior, thus her duty is to keep the place clean and ordered. In this case our best action is to help the mommy and keep its place tidy and make cleaning in time.
Now, if you know why your dog eats feces, we may go to dog
behavior correction means.
In the order to improve the situation and stop dog eating poop
quickly we should act in two ways.
First, stop the reason! May be for this you will have to examine your relationship with the dog. Change dog feeding, play more often, start training, that will make routine of your dog more interesting and active.
Second, if your dogs eat poop because of lack of attention, you
should not use punishment. As it may cause even worse dog habit of
eating poop. Because this way a dog gets what it wants, your
attention, even if it is punishment. Call you dog. If you managed
to do this and your dog came to you, praise it with a treat, then
try to turn its attention to something else, by a game, obedience
commands, toys etc. Always take dog toys and a dog treat bag to dog
walking.
Anyway, for successful dog behavior correction positive actions
like games, treats work better than punishment, even the most
severe one.
Always try to foresee dog's actions and be ready to call it back
before it is attracted by feces. Every day train calling a dog to
you in walking.
Train a dog to a muzzle and use it in walking when
a dog is off leash.
One more way to stop dog eating feces is contraversial, as it is
based on allowing a dog to eat poop, but a dog owner goes trough
the pass of dog walking ahead and drops poop that is mixed with
something disgusting for a dog, like pepper, spicy sauce etc. Then
in walking you bring your dog closer to the mixed poop to take it
and then give prohibiting command "No!", "Stop!" etc. But we do
not think that many dog owners would like to choose this way.