How to teach your dog to eat POO

Marley is ball obsessed. I learned this in the fall, when the apples fall from the trees. Bright green tennis ball imitating apples.

Marley discovered these and in his quest to kill them, ended up learning that they gave a nice crunch, so he started eating them. This lead to loose stools, urgency and a totally off kilter crate schedule.

At one point he squished his way through the cat door we have in the fence (since removed of course) and spent about a half hour frantically eating apples before I figured out what was going on. By then the apples were fermenting and his belly was HUGE, so on the vet's advice we had him regurgitate. It was an impressive amount, and as a side note, the hydrogen peroxide must interact with something in the apples, because it was almost instantaneous.

Baker and Stevie have done a doggie-see, doogie-do and have started mimicking Marley's behavior. Their stools have obvious apple chunks in them, and now, Marley has started to eat their stools.

Wait, it gets better.

I'm trying to stay on top of hundreds of dropped apples (these are my neighbors trees, huge overgrown trees that hang over my fence - to be pruned shortly) and pick up every piece of poo without hovering, and the winter weather arrives. Frozen poo, frozen apples. It doesn't get any better than that.

At this point Marley has progressed from apple laden stool eating to eating any stool he can find, except apparently his own. Frozen stool are his favorite, and I can assure you that in 14 inches of fresh powder snow, a human with a shovel is not going to find them, but a dog with a nose sure is.

Now Marley is vomiting dog stool. He burps it too.

The snow is finally packed, stools are easier to find. All the animals have been wormed, the apples were cleaned up, but they still drop and here it is February. Pinecones are falling from the spruce tree, and they look suspiciously like stools, but they lack the crunch factor, because he hasn't started eating those yet.

And THAT is how a dog learns to eat poo.

Running Away to Feel Better

Stevie sticks to me around the house and in the unfenced yard. Going from house to fence has never been an issue. This week he has "taken off" three or four times, deaf to me, intensely involved in sniffing, around the neighbor's house, totally out of the norm behavior for him in our home environment.

Coincidentally, he has also been unwell, sporadic diarrhea, an episode of repetitive vomiting, and at times appearing totally normal, and other times obviously lackluster. Last night he also had urinary urgency, he seems to have been consuming lots of snow.

I suspect his extreme sniffing is self-soothing or escapist behavior. The adrenalin rush that accompanies the sniffing and hunting behavior eases his physical discomfort. He's a smart doggie and he's repeated it for some relief.

I wonder if this could also be applied to a family that asked me about their English Pointer, who instantly took off and always seemed to need to be outside and whined constantly. Now you could say "typical pointer" but I would want to look into physical discomfort (whether structural or systemic such as thyroid imbalance or auto-immune) as a driver for the behavior because their description of it was so extreme and consistent. Was the only time this dog had comfort for his physical ills when he was self-medicating with adrenalin?