Why does my dog eat poop, and how do I stop it?
Pick it up before he gets to it — that is what the American Kennel Club (AKC) advises. In the largest survey of this behavior, about 23% of dogs had been seen eating stool at least once, the products sold to stop it worked in 0–2% of cases, and training methods in 1–4%. It is worth a vet visit if it is new in an adult dog or comes with weight or appetite changes, but for most dogs it is management rather than a cure.
In short
The whole chapter in a few lines. Read further only where you want to know why.
A breed summary is only a prejudice about the breed.
You can use prejudices — but get to know your own dog.
It depends on the breeding, the environment, and the dog’s own character. He may have all of the breed’s traits, some of them, or none. Every dog is his own.
1 How common it is
The reference work on this is a pair of surveys by Benjamin Hart and colleagues at UC Davis, published in Veterinary Medicine and Science in 2018, with 1,552 and 1,475 usable returns.
| Finding | Figure |
|---|---|
| Dogs seen eating stool at least once | about 23% |
| Frequent stool eaters — seen six or more times | 16% |
| Frequent eaters that take fresh stool, no more than two days old | 85% |
It is also more common in households with two or more dogs.
One note before you compare this with anything else you read: popular summaries of this paper circulate with slightly different numbers — 24%, “five or more times”, 92%. We are using the figures printed in the paper itself.
Roughly one dog in four. That fact alone removes most of what an owner feels about it, which is the first thing worth doing here.
2 Why they do it — and the timer that gives it away
Hart’s explanation is evolutionary rather than nutritional. Eating fresh stool looks like an inherited behavior from ancestral canids: keeping the den and resting area clean of stool protected the group from intestinal parasites.
And there is a detail the researchers point to. The eggs of many worms in fresh stool are not yet infective; older stool is the more dangerous kind. Giardia is the exception: it is infective as soon as it leaves the body (CAPC), so fresh stool can still infect him. A den-cleaning instinct with a built-in timer would therefore take fresh stool and leave old stool — which is exactly what 85% of frequent eaters do.
Two associations from the same work:
- Greedy eaters. 51% of the stool-eating dogs were described as greedy eaters, against 28% of the others — the dogs who inhale their food.
- Multi-dog households were the most likely to have one.
And one thing it is not: a puppy phase in general. The paper found the behavior spread across age, sex, and neuter-status groups, and concluded that it does not appear to be a reflection of juvenile behavior.
3 What it is probably not
The article most owners have already read says this means a nutritional deficiency, a bad diet, or poor absorption. The data does not support that as the main explanation, and the deficiency story is the reason the shelves are full of supplements.
A vet visit is still right, and here is where it earns its place rather than being a reflex:
- the behavior is new in an adult dog who never did it
- there is a change in appetite or weight
- there are parasites to rule out, or a condition affecting absorption
That is a different sentence from “he must be missing something in his food”, and it sends you to a useful place instead of a shop.
4 Eleven products, and what they achieved
This is the finding almost nobody publishes, and the reason this chapter exists.
The same study looked at eleven commercial products marketed to stop dogs eating stool. The reported success rate ranged from 0 to 2%.
And the part that is even less often printed: the behavioral methods owners tried did barely better, at 1 to 4% for ending the habit.
Read that second number carefully, because it is not an argument against training. It is an argument about what training is for here: teaching a dog to leave something is useful in the moment, and it is not the thing that ends the behavior. The next section is what does.
5 What actually works
It is unglamorous and it is free.
1. Pick it up immediately. That is also what the AKC advises. A stool that is not there cannot be eaten, and since 85% of frequent eaters go for fresh stool, the window you are competing with is short.
2. Supervise in the yard, especially with more than one dog. The surveys found the highest rates in households with two or more dogs. Our opinion: the yard is also the place owners are least likely to be watching.
3. Teach “leave it” as a tool, not a cure. It works in the moment and it is worth having. Expect it to manage the behavior rather than end it — that is what the 1 to 4% figure means. How Frenchies learn covers making it stick.
4. Take it to the vet in the three situations listed above.
6 The part that is specific to this breed
This study has no data on French Bulldogs. We looked: the paper mentions a few other breeds, but not this one. We would rather tell you that than guess.
What does connect is the greedy eater association. Our opinion: this breed is strongly food-motivated and tends to eat fast, which is why our own feeding guide recommends a slow-feeder bowl. If eager eating and this behavior travel together, then how you feed him is not a separate subject from this page.
And one genuine breed risk worth stating plainly: a flat-faced dog who inhales anything is at higher risk of choking and of breathing food into the airway. That applies to his dinner, and it applies to whatever he grabs in the yard.
7 Spike: our experience
Our stories and opinions on this page are our personal experience with one dog, Spike. One dog is not the measure for every dog — for your dog, your vet decides.
“We watched from around the corner, every time, for two or three months. Sheer persistence broke the habit.”
Spike ate poop as a puppy, until he was somewhere around one to one and a half years old.
We did not wait for it to pass. Every time he went to do his business, we watched from around the corner, ready to say NO the moment he went for the poop. Two to three months of that, until he stopped.
We wanted him to connect NO with anything bad, not just the poop. And it worked: today he knows that NO means he should not be doing it, whatever it is.
With poop, a reward has a hard time winning, because the reward is already right in front of his nose: disgusting to us, a delicacy to him.
Looking back, all of it rested on supervision: being there while the stool was fresh, and fresh stool is exactly what the study found dogs go for. One dog cannot tell us whether that is what decided it, or simply growing up. The study also found that owners’ methods rarely ended the habit (1 to 4%). And “he will grow out of it” is not advice we give, because the study found this is mostly not a puppy phase.
What we can point at is the feeding side, which the research does connect. He is a fast, enthusiastic eater, and he eats from a raised slow-feeder bowl. That was for the eating speed rather than for this, but the two sit closer together than we realized before reading the paper.
Owners Also Ask
Why does my dog eat poop, and how do I stop it?
Pick it up before he gets to it — that is what the American Kennel Club (AKC) advises. In the largest survey of this behavior, about 23% of dogs had been seen eating stool at least once, the products sold to stop it worked in 0–2% of cases, and training methods in 1–4%. It is worth a vet visit if it is new in an adult dog or comes with weight or appetite changes, but for most dogs it is management rather than a cure.
Does eating poop mean my dog is missing something in his diet?
That is the usual explanation and the data does not support it as the main one. The behavior looks like an inherited den-cleaning instinct: 85% of frequent eaters take fresh stool, in which the eggs of many worms are not yet infective (Giardia is infective right away, CAPC). A vet visit is still right if the behavior is new in an adult dog, or if appetite or weight have changed.
Do the products that stop dogs eating poop work?
Eleven products marketed for it were looked at in the same study, and the reported success rates were 0 to 2%. Behavioral methods owners tried ended the habit in 1 to 4% of cases. The AKC advises picking the stool up immediately, before the dog gets to it.
How common is it?
About 23% of dogs had been seen doing it at least once, and 16% were frequent eaters, seen six or more times. It is more common in households with two or more dogs. Roughly one dog in four, which is worth knowing before you conclude anything about your own.
When should I take this to the vet?
When it is new in an adult dog who never did it, when appetite or weight have changed, and to rule out parasites or a condition affecting absorption. For a flat-faced dog there is also the swallowing risk: a dog who inhales things is more likely to choke or breathe something into his airway.
References
- Hart BL, Hart LA, Thigpen AP, Tran A, Bain MJ (2018). The paradox of canine conspecific coprophagy. Veterinary Medicine and Science 4(2):106–114 (PMC, full text). pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Animal Humane Society — The real story behind why your dog eats poop. animalhumanesociety.org
- American Kennel Club — Why dogs eat poop and how to stop it. akc.org
- Companion Animal Parasite Council (CAPC) — Giardia. capcvet.org
- Companion Animal Parasite Council (CAPC) — Ascarids (roundworms). capcvet.org
