Dogs might have a good sense of smell, but that doesn’t mean they have a good sense of taste. They have a knack for finding awful stuff that can make for unpleasant walks. Photo: dpa
As much as you love your dog, its innate enjoyment of unpleasant substances – food waste, animal excrement and vomit, for example – can put a strain on that emotional bond. But there are solutions.
Such behaviour dates back to the time when dogs were evolving and had to live off human waste during the domestication process.
“This allowed them to be useful because it improved hygiene around the home,” says German behavioural biologist Stefanie Riemer. And what is disgusting for us is simply pleasant for dogs – even today.
“Animals don’t look at best-before dates or whether a package is damaged,” says veterinarian and animal behaviour therapist Ronald Lindner. “They just digest and see if it tastes good or not.”
This could be soft droppings they discover when they pick up ground scent: “For dogs, this is part of their exploratory behaviour and they eat it like we eat a salt cracker,” he adds.
It’s only dangerous when dogs can’t stop and it leads to stomach overload; the same applies to human excrement or vomit with alcohol or drug residues. Here, this can mean serious health disorders in extreme cases.
“Consuming cat faeces and human faeces is basically normal,” Riemer agrees.
But it is more worrying when dogs constantly eat the excrement of their own species, or even plastic waste, which often indicates an undetected medical problem: “Healthy dogs shouldn’t really do that.”
Behaviour like pica – eating things that provide no physical benefit – is usually caused by gastrointestinal disease, but is often not recognised without a more precise diagnosis.
However, it is also conceivable that the eating of dog excrement is just “something to do”. Dogs that grew up in shelters sometimes exhibit this behaviour, and it can sometimes mask a need for attention.
According to Lindner, malnutrition can be “almost 100% ruled out” as the cause. Nowadays, dog food is generally standard, strictly controlled and usually provides the animals with all the nutrients they need.
To prevent dogs from eating unpleasant or even dangerous things, the expert recommends antitoxin bait training. Even “eating machines” like a Labrador can learn not to immediately swallow things found on the ground, and instead indicate them to its owner.
The secret is not to punish wrong behaviour but to positively reinforce the right alternative behaviour.
“It doesn’t take 10 minutes to teach them the basics,” says Lindner. “But then you have to practise it thousands of times until the behaviour is instilled.”
The idea behind this method is that the dog no longer considers the unwanted “treats” to be ripe for immediate consumption, but to just display them – for example, by sitting down in front of them.
In return, it gets a tasty treat as an even better alternative: Sausage or cheese, for example, although the owner will know best what to offer as the the ultimate reward for their pet.
In the first stages of training, a look at the owner when the dog comes across a tempting morsel – but does not eat it – will earn it a treat.
However, many dogs are not only happy to gobble up disgusting things: Somehow, owners agree, they are overjoyed when they find an old carcass or fresh droppings of a wild animal to roll around on.
“The more horrible it smells, the more fun it is,” says dog behaviour trainer Alexandra Wischall-Wagner.
Fox excrement comes at the top of the ranking for such rolling, which dog experts assume stems from the hunting behaviour of wolves: They want to cover up their own smell, have a sense of belonging to the group and not be so conspicuous in the herd.
Lindner, however, sees it more as “a clear comfort behaviour”. His male dog once managed to roll in a stinking, dead swan, and “felt very happy and comfortable there!” The behavioural therapist suspects this to be a way of dealing with stress in a compensatory way – both negative and positive.
“A great holiday knocks out even the strongest dog,” Lindner says. “Then he doesn’t know where to put all his feelings – and if he then maybe finds a swan, it’s an easy fix for stress.” – dpa/Katja Sponholz
