Dogs eating cat poo

Yeah I know it's not a nice title but then it's not a nice habit for a dog to have either

Anyway, I was nattering to my inlaws about Tilly's habbit of eating cat poo. She normally does it as soon as one of the cats has been in the litter tray. We came up with this. Probably totally wrong

As I say she will follow Timmy the cat to the litter tray, once he's done a poo she will dig around and eat it :smt078 We were wondering if it was possible that it could be a mothering instinct in her. Even tho Tilly has never had pups could it be a possiblity that she is still showing a mothering instinct and cleaning up the cat poo as she would clean up a pup's mess?

Many dogs do it, they like the taste basically :smt078
There are all sorts of faeces which dogs will eat given the opportunity, from rabbit droppings to horse droppings and all sorts in between which they`ll either eat or roll in.

In many cases its harmless though not very pleasant for us of course, but there are good reasons to stop dogs eating it generally, including parasites, posions which a wild animal may have ingested, horse droppings which are potentially dangerous to all breeds of collies and collie mixes, [ as horse wormer contains Ivermectin and we never know which horses have recently been wormed and use the same areas as us when walking dogs ].
There is a significant worry regarding litter tray scavenging which is to do with the cat litter itself.
Some types [ not all ] are highly toxic to dogs, plus carry a risk of causing internal blockage if any is ingested along with the poop.

I would stongly advise therefore, that your inlaws take this very seriously and discourage Tilly by distracting her in time, and by getting a hooded tray, preferably putting it behind a baby gate until they can be sure that they have trained Tilly out of it.
They should not use harsh methods incidentally, as that will just lead Tilly to think she just should`nt be *seen* doing it so she`ll learn to do it when no ones around if she can get to the tray easily when no one is around.

HTH :smt001

Tilly's my dog not my inlaws dog Patch.

I can't put it behind a baby gate as Tilly can clear them in one leap so what I've done is close the bathroom door,where the litter tray is, enough so that only the cats can get in. I'm also clearing out the poo as soon as I know it's there.

I read something in dog world about a dog with anorexia and the cure came from eating horse poo, as horses are not meat eaters there poo has a bacteria in it that can be missing in the dogs gut, dogs that have had antibiotics and so on can be worse for eating it, never new about the wormer thing, thanks patch will need to keep it in mind, I try to use panacure 10% for the horses but you must change wormers with them,. my dogs often eat sheep, horse and rabbit poo, and cat ones if they find them, I dont mind the horse poo to much but cat poo stinks , as already said the stinker the better for some dogs, yuk

Unlike dog poo, cat poo smells and tastes of exactly what the cat has eaten. Most dogs love cat food, even though they are not allowed to eat it

I think dogs eat the cat poo as it would taste os the food the cat has eaten.

my dog misty loves to eat cat poo i thinks he loves the taste yuck however it lasts about 1 min before he pukes it back up so its lucky i dont have cats.
have you tried a dog gate cause there taller

Yay, someone else experiencing my frustration. Roxy is addicted to Cat food, and I think this is because she's not allowed the cat food, and as someone has mentioned Cat poo is basically the same thing because its not digested properly.

I cant for the love of me get Roxy to stop eating it (our cat tray is behind a baby gate so she doesn't eat my cats poo.)

She eats it outside, she will run for miles to find some and gobble it up before we get there. We just cant stop her. On-lead she'll ignore it with a firm 'leave', but off-lead we stumped.

My dogs ate cat poo but this was just when they were puppies and grew out of it. I now have the cat litter on a shelf so they can't get to it but it does seem to be normal behaviour for pups. They'll put anything in their mouth

Roxys ten months now, when did your pups grow out of it??

Two of them around 5 months and the other one shall we say is still tempted but is a lot better and also does not have access. He's two now, guess he stopped around 12 months