poopy dog

[leah]

y'all, my dog has me flummoxed. it seems like once a month, he goes through this phase for a day or two wherein he all of a sudden decides that he can't hold his poo overnight (and by overnight i mean for about six hours) and poos all over his kennel and himself.

today is one of those days, and he not only pooed in his kennel this morning, no no--he then ATE it. AND puked it back up. what is with this dog??? is he sick? is he a gremlin? i don't know what to make of it.

[araby]

How many times/day does he get walked? what time is the latest time?

[leah]

walked like actual walk or walked like taken out to poop?

actual walks he gets about once a day, usually when josh or i get home from work.

as for poopy time, he gets let out at 6 a.m., at 7:45 a.m., at 11:30 a.m., at 3:30 p.m., at 5:30 p.m., and then a couple of times between that one and bedtime, when he gets let out one more time around 11 p.m. rinse and repeat.

[araby]

doh, you said six hours in your initial post. my bad. here is a link:

http://www.pet-comfort-products.com/why-dogs-eat-poop.html

[ClakarEQ]

poo eating as gross as it sounds isn't all that bad (I didn't read araby's link) and often times a dog can smell the good still left in the poo.

How old is he?
When you let him out the last time at night, does anyone watch him to make sure he poos?
Have you changed his food recently or semi-often?
Treats and such, are these always the same and given at consistent times (e.g. do you give him piggy ears sometimes, dog bones at others, etc)?
Not to get personal but does it coincide with your cycle or other stress type issues?
Is he fixed?
Are you two "pack leaders" and do you know how to tell?
Is he fed on a set schedule and not a semi-random schedule where one day it's at 5pm the next at 7pm, etc?
How much does he eat and do you only provide a set amount (e.g. 1 cup of food twice a day)?

I am not an expert but I've had similar problems with my oldest dog. It ended up being, she just didn't want to take a dump at night when it was too cold, so at sometime in the night she'd shit in the house. To fix it I pretty much told her "go take a dump" (she actually knows what that means just like "Go pee" she knows that one too).

I've had several dogs, most are of larger breeds (labs, lab mix, etc) and the wife and I are big animal lovers, our current "family", our 3 dogs are all from rescue leagues and have emotional issues (one is a manic depressive, the other two were beaten by men or seem to have been).

[Harrison]

Solution: Get a cat.

Dogs are too fucking needy.

[Griever]

Have you given your dog any human food recently? My dog is fine as long as she is eating her food only, but then if I decide to spoil her with some ham or a steak bone, she seems to get sick and have diarrhea problems for the next few days. I've learned my lesson there.

[leah]

ok i am going to try to answer all of everyone's questions/comments hehe . . .

CLAKAR: he is almost a year old (march 30). when we take him out to poo, we walk around with him on a leash until he does his business; when he poos, i give him a cookie (what we call small dog treats), but josh does not. i think my mom does when she lets him out for me, though. we've been feeding him iams puppy food since we got him, so no changes there. (also, he is not fed on a strict schedule--like you said, it's 5p one day and 7p another. he *is* fed a set amount, though.) i haven't paid attention to whether his poo cycles coincide with me, but i will make a note of it and see if the same thing happens next month. he is fixed. and no, i don't think we've established pack leadership :\ chester's been giving us trouble for a while. he's very aggressive, especially around food, and has bitten both of us several times. we spoke with the lady who taught our puppy class, who gave us some advice, but it hasn't really curbed the behavior. he has also taken up barking lately, which is aggravating. i know a lot of these problems stem from the lack of leadership on our part. i'd like to bring in the trainer to give us some one-on-one help, but she's just too expensive right now.

harrison: i have a cat already. he is the best cat in the world!

griever: i try not to let him get hold of people food, but if he manages to snag something, it's a lost cause hehe . . . unless you'd like to lose a finger. the only thing i can think of him having eaten yesterday that counts as people food is a kernel or two of frozen corn that i dropped on the floor.

[ClakarEQ]

I'm not saying Caesar Milan(sp) is any kind of "god" but you may just want to get his book, I've not read it myself but I do enjoy his series on cable and I have used some of what he's taught there and it has worked really well for me.

I'd suggest you try and feed him on a set schedule, +/- 30mins is one thing but +/- a couple hours isn't so good. That said it is easier to say than do especially if you and Josh have some randomness in your own schedule .

The food thing is a telling sign, especially if he attempts or has bitten you guys around food before. It's one thing to have your dog bite your finger when you give them a treat (although that is still a problem), it is another thing when a dog growls / bites around his food bowl to his feeders because that implies "I AM IN CHARGE, BACK OFF".

Another suggestion would be to enforce who is in charge and knowing his food bowl is "sensitive and reproducible", I'd start there. When you put food in his bowl, don't let him eat, you and josh actually pretend as though you're eating, even going so far as to spit a bit in his bowl, I know that sounds really gross and uncalled for but the purpose is to place your saliva on his food before he eats it. Don't let him eat his food until he realizes "he eats second". Again easier said than done and don't post a week from now saying I got 6 stitches in my cheek, and telling me to fuck off LOL. Any time he growls, peaks his ears or even looks at either of you "strange" during this "test", snap his collar and/or use your fingers / hand to show force on his neck, as if you're biting him, this isn't punishment but placing the pecking order of the house, and he shouldn't think he's on top.

The "pack leader" thing probably won't help his poo issue. I bet you can equate that to either issues / things in your lives and/or his eating schedule. There are some "connections" of whatever kind between human females and their cycle and male dogs (and even female dogs for that matter). I could see it being "worse" if he thinks he's the leader though.

I'm only posting to help, just suggestions is all for you to take or leave

[Darcler]

For the barking, is he doing it when someone knocks on the door or is it just randomly walking around and yapping?

My mother in law's demon had a big problem with barking and growling when someone knocked on the door. They took him to doggy school for a week and it seemed to help a shade. When someone knocks, he'll bark, they will make him "down" and "stay" and if he is still barking, they'll spray him in the mouth with Bitter Apple. It normally just takes one squirt of that before he shuts up and then they answer the door. There was even one time where he didnt bark at all. I thought he was outside, but he was down in the living room. Shocked me.

I have no help for any of the rest of it, Zeus was a poop machine too. Though he never ate any of it.

[Drem]

everything caesar says is common sense. i love that guy

[leah]

hah, darc, chester has managed to outsmart the bitter apple attack--he won't let anyone get close enough to him to spray it once he sees it's in our hand. he just scampers off and barks from a safe distance away. it's hard to effectively spray him, too, because he's so little (small mouth) and so low to the ground.

also, the barking happens both when someone's at the door and just for funsies, apparently. i think he likes the sound of his own voice. i want to remove his vocal cords.

[KaiineTN]

You let your dog out a lot. Usually I only put mine out 2-4 times a day.

[leah]

fear of having to clean up a shit-covered dog will do that to ya hehe our friend craig only needs to let his dog out a couple of times a day. that blows my mind. CHESTER IS SO HIGH-MAINTENANCE

[Darcler]

Trade him in for a Basenji. Solves the barking problem. But only if you like yodeling.

[ClakarEQ]

I must have overlooked the barking, that can be another dominance issue where again he is in charge and runs the show, you guys are members of his pack.

Barking is a tough one. My large field lab whom we got from a rescue league failed her tests to become a leader for the blind dog. Her barking is so ingrained because of her training as a pup, she can't be trained to bark on command, that is actually one of the easiest tricks to teach a dog, she was trained to ONLY bark when the phone rang, a doorbell, or a knock. We've been able to correct her on the phone (thank god) but the doorbell and knocking, I'll admit I've given up . The other 2 dogs, it's a coin toss at times, if Kona (black field lab) barks, it's a 50/50 shot that Buddy or Coco start up, generally I just look at them, project "dominance", and they stop. For Kona, I just acknowledge what she heard, and she'll stop (i.e. walk to the door).

You'd be surprised how poorly negative reinforcement works vs. dominance and "acceptable" behavior. Just as you've seen with your bitter apple attempts. He didn't learn a thing other than to avoid you. Just like hitting a dog, often times you project "evil" onto them and typically one of two things take place

- the dog becomes fearful of you
- the dog becomes more aggressive

Check out his book, you'd probably garnish more off it than weeks of what training would do. Or at least try to check out his show now and again, I think you'd be shocked at what dominance and passive-submissive behavior can accomplish. Even after watching him for a few years now, to see what he can accomplish in just a few hours, its amazing.

[leah]

i've watched several episodes and it all seems like voodoo magic, man. i try to be as calm and quiet as i can when dealing with chester, but i don't seem to get anywhere. josh is another story, too--he tends to get loud when he's mad or frustrated.

[brinstar]

you got a broken dog

besides what was so bad about that made you need a dog

[Gypsiyee]

I'd say you might have a consistency problem, too, just based on your comment about how Josh doesn't give treats when he poos, and that he deals with discipline in a completely different way. Little stuff like that can bleed into all sorts of training issues.

Not necessarily in the treat him to poop case because eventually he needs to be weaned off of rewards for that, but if in other training you're rewarding him for certain things and Josh isn't, or reprimanding him for certain things when Josh isn't, he's just going to get confused and stop looking at either of you as the dominant leader. If he doesn't see you as the leader, he's insecure and he's going to be a nightmare to deal with.

I really struggle with Emi with something similar because Dad just doesn't listen to me and tries techniques that he uses on his hellish dog (who is a behavioral nightmare due to shitty and ignorant training), like pointing in her face and having a screaming match (which does absolutely fucking nothing. never has for any dog, never will for any dog) or rubbing her nose in stuff (again, one of the stupidest training techniques ever invented - obviously, he does this shit when I'm not around, and I catch him sometimes.) It's incredibly difficult having multiple people around a dog-in-training, especially when they're not all on the same page.

I personally feel that consistency is probably the #1 most important thing in teaching a dog anything - if everyone is using different techniques and commands, it's just about impossible.

For the pooping, I would try to take note of what exactly happened the night he does it - who let him out, was he punished for anything that night, was he deprived of anything he usually gets, did he get anything he shouldn't have gotten, etc. Keeping track of that stuff is going to tell you if it might be from stress, needing attention, boredom, etc. As far as eating it, sometimes, that's just gonna happen. #1, dogs like the taste of poo, and #2, it's going to be his way of cleaning his den. You wouldn't want to sleep in a toilet, neither does he. There's a ton of reasons dogs eat poo - I think the only way to stop that particular problem is solving the problem of him pooing in his kennel so he doesn't have access to eating it.

[Maeya]

I believe there's a product that you can put into a dog's food to make his poop taste worse than usual to deter them from eating... but it doesn't solve the problem about why he will randomly poop in the kennel once or twice a month.

[Evermore]

shoot the fucker.


lol


in order to claim the food, clarke is correct.but you dont need to spit in it. thats a scent thing and your scent is all over the bowl already. put the bowl down and stand between him and the food. put him into a submissive postition. such as sit or down. avoid direct eye contact. when he submits, WAIT a few min before allowing him to eat. Tell him to stay and step away from the food. make sure to show affection when he does what you are looking for so he makes the association. rinse and repeat. you will need to do this until he gets it thru his head. you will know cause he will autosubmit with out you saying anything.

[Evermore]

Not necessarily in the treat him to poop case because eventually he needs to be weaned off of rewards for that, but if in other training you're rewarding him for certain things and Josh isn't, or reprimanding him for certain things when Josh isn't, he's just going to get confused and stop looking at either of you as the dominant leader. If he doesn't see you as the leader, he's insecure and he's going to be a nightmare to deal with.

Gyps the dog wont be insecure he will try and step up to be the leader. its their nature. remember dogs are pack animals.

[Gypsiyee]

it makes dogs incredibly insecure to have an inconsistent leader because they don't know their place in the pack. not all dogs have dominant personalities, either - many don't want to be pack leaders, regardless of if they try just to establish some structure - they want you to take charge, because it's far less stressful for them. they're pack animals, yes, but they're not all naturally pack leaders.