Causes of Coprophagia
One common medical reason why a dog would be inclined to eat their own feces is a gastrointestinal condition that inhibits the dog's absorption of the nutrients it has eaten, leading to excessive hunger. This could make the feces look more appealing as a food item. Any condition that prevents a dog from getting all the nutrients it should be getting can have this effect. If this is the case, a dietary modification may be in order.
Other common situations that can make a dog hungry enough to eat feces are malnutrition due to overly infrequent feeding, vitamin and mineral deficiencies in the dog's normal food, or difficulty digesting the food due to an excessive fiber content. There are some drugs, most notably steroids, that have also been recorded as the cause of canine coprophagia.
Behavioral Causes
While it is possible for coprophagia to develop as a result of a medical condition or improper dieting, the greatest causes of coprophagia are behavioral. Young puppies are frequently coprophagic, a tendency that is generally accepted to be caused by the puppy's own curiosity and obvious investigative or playful attitude. The puppy is still too young to determine what the stool is and whether or not it is food, so they experiment.
Puppies are also thought to derive their tendency to consume feces from observing their mother. While puppies are still very young, the mother constructs an area analogous to a bird's nest to keep the tiny puppies safe. To clean the nest, the mother often eats her puppies' excrement, so it is possible that young puppies develop coprophagia through observation and imitation of their mother.
Treatment of Coprophagia
Since coprophagia is, for the most part, a behavioral condition, it can often be treated by simply training the dog not to eat feces. A good way to train a dog to stop eating feces is to regularly clean the place where the dog defecates to prevent the dog from being able eat the stools it leaves there, and to watch the dog closely when it is outside, stopping it from eating stools on the ground with a jerk on the leash or other harsh reprimand. Soon the dog will learn that you do not want it to eat feces, and it will break the habit, at which point the dog's treatment for coprophagia is complete.
There is also a medication for coprophagia in the form of a chewable, taste-enhanced pill called Excel Deter, which has been shown in studies to be 98% effective at stopping a dog from a feces-eating habit. Excel Deter is recommended for daily oral administration over the course of two weeks, always administering it at the same time each day. Larger animals need more of this medication for the same effect.
Coprophagia is a common condition that affects many dogs. It rarely causes severe health problems, but dog owners think it is an extremely disgusting habit. The thought of a dog eating fresh feces from the ground outside, then walking inside to lick one's face doubtful to be pleasant for any human.