I'm at my wits end with this problem.
I have a female German Shepherd, she's a little over 3 months old. We brought her home at 8 weeks and we started having this issue right out of the gate. At first she only did it when we had to crate her and leave the house, we left a small bit of food and water for her, a couple toys, and lined the crate with a puppy pad. It was very obvious that being alone stressed her out and any time she peed or pooped in the crate she would drink/eat it. She'd eat the pad if she did it on the pad. As of recent though, I've caught her straining herself in her own bed just to make herself poop, and she will just lay down next to it and snack on it.
Early on the vet wormed her, and suggested we switch foods, which we did and theres no difference. She has no sign of illness or malabsorption, and at this point he says it sounds purely behavioral and I need to start taking measures to curb her habit. The only fool proof way to fix it is to take it away from her before she can eat it, but the issue now is that I can't just not sleep, or stay at home all the time to make sure she doesn't do it. I've read that some people add pumpkin or pineapple, sometimes meat tenderizer to their dogs food and it makes the poop taste bad so they wont want to eat it but any time I add anything to her food she refuses to touch it.
If she is running and playing outside and gets near one of her own poops, she backs away quickly and wants nothing to do with it. Nor does she show any interest in any other animals poop. This is only an issue I've seen when shes left alone for any period of time, if I'm just in another room for a moment, if I'm asleep (directly next to her), or she has to stay home alone.
She plays a lot and gets plenty of stimulation, I am home almost all the time and we have other dogs that always play with her even when I can't.
I'm at the point where I'm so disgusted that I don't even want to be around her and I don't want this to continue down a bad road. What can I do? Is there anything I can do? I love her to death and shes such a sweet dog but I don't even want to touch her knowing she does this. Any help would be greatly appreciated..
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/adxjrw/puppy_eating_her_own_poop/
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