Dr. Lera explains why a 7-month-old Yorkshire Terrier named Mia eats her feces, covering learned behavior, anxiety, and microbiome issues. Solutions include picking up waste promptly, adding canned spinach or pineapple to food, and using products like Forbid. Medication alone works only about 15% of the time.
Hey guys, My name is Dr. Lara here. I'm with Mia. Mia is a seven month old female intact Yorkie. And so Mia's coming in today for an ear infection. But they did mention one other interesting thing, eating her poop. So in Spanish we would say comiendo mieda, but that would be something different. So Mia is eating her poop. And there are a number of different reasons that that can actually happen. Happen. Mothers or, you know, mothers of puppies will actually eat the feces of their puppies just while they're licking their butt, trying to stimulate them to poop to make sure that they have normal bowel movements. And so sometimes the puppies can pick up that behavior from their mom. It could be a potential habit. Some people or scientists suspect that there is a possibility that what they might be doing. And she's shaking a little bit. So I'm actually going to give her back to mom, but mom doesn't want to be on video. So I'm going to give her back without you guys seeing her. Say bye to Mia by. There we go. And so one of the things that will happen is they will go ahead and we suspect that they're trying to populate their intestines with the bacteria. So by eating the feces again could actually be like a normal behavior. Most dogs actually will not get sick from eating their feces, especially if there's no medical condition causing this. Now there are some particular medical conditions that could potentially cause this. And such a young dog like Mia, who's only seven months old, typically I wouldn't anticipate something like Cushing's diabetes. Like some of those are some of the more common metabolic issues that would cause that. The other thing that could potentially go ahead and cause it would be if she's having some sort of, I would say maybe like anxiety behavior where it could be a stress induced behavior. So that's something that you guys want to take into consideration. Consideration is if she is stressed, then she could potentially be experiencing or coping with it by eating her own feces. Now the other thing that you want to take into consideration is and this, I don't think there's going to be as much of a problem with her or possibility. But like if she's not interacting or having a lot of play time, which you guys have three other dogs at home. So I don't think that the lack of play time is going to be an issue. So if you do think there is some anxiety happening with this, then what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to go ahead and talk to your veterinarian about some behavioral modifications. Medicating your dog for a behavioral issue is only going to work 15% of the time. So that means 85% of the time, giving medication alone will not help with a behavior issue. Okay. At the end of the day, there are some different things that you can do. You can try canned spinach. You can try fresh pineapple. You can try just being on top of them, making sure that you're picking up the poop before they finish, before they get a chance to eat it. And by the way, give it to the dog whose poop is being eaten, because sometimes they want to eat somebody else's poop. So make sure you give it to the dog whose poop is being eaten. There's a product called Forbid, and there's also an older product called Adolph's Meat Tenderizer. That's a power that you can put on the food as well. Well, put it on the food, not on the poop. Okay, guys, mom and dad said that I wasn't clear about that before, so I just want to be clear with you guys. If you found this video helpful, give us a thumbs up. If you also found it helpful, please subscribe. And if you know somebody who needs to watch it, share it with them. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
