Eating His Own Poo!

Quick introduction first I think.
We have a Staff who we adopted from the local sanctuary, we do not know his history other than he was found abandoned, injured which resulted in him having one of his back legs amputated. He is approx 5-6 years old.

He (Samba) has lived with us since December last year and a habit that he has which is rapidly becoming more and more of a problem and more frequent is that he is eating his own poo, a lot.
At first he did it a couple of times in a month which we put down to him being in a new enviroment. Recently he is doing it at least once a day!

We have taken him to the vets who checked him out and said he was healthy, good weight, no worms etc and maybe it was a separation issue, we both work full time but come back to see him through the day, but he was still doing it.
I am now self employed so I am at home more often than I was, so he is rarely on his own for more than a couple of hours at a time. He still does it, always in the same place on the kitchen floor, and he never does it when we can see him so we cannot distract him from it as its always done before we are there to see it happen.

I try to clean it up without him seeing so he doesn't think that this is what he is supposed to do, he isn't shouted at for doing it, just taken outside.
I am having to stay outside with him most days until he does something because otherwise, as silly as it sounds, it's like hes saving it on purpose for if we go out. We can walk him and he will do it while out but then still have enough left to do it again at home.

He is doing it without fail every day, and today, he has already done it twice, once inside and once outside.

We have tried all the usual tricks but nothing appears to be working.

He is exercised lots and has plenty of things to play with in the house (he is also destructive but thats another issue). He has recently taken to trying to eat anything and everything he can, scouting out food while out walking, he tried to eat a discarded take away paper last week. He always seems ravenous. He is eating Wainwrights dried food which is measured out to his weight, plus a few treats (food adjusted accordingly).

Can anyone suggest anything that could help as I am getting to my wits end with it.

Thanks all.

He should have outgrown the poo thing by now. As pups they will mimic the behavior of their mom in keeping the den clean.

For walking and eating it just takes time and correcting them before they can eat off the ground. The watch me command should help. Bitter Apple for things around the house you don't want him to chew.

When you get a chance stop by and introduce yourself

https://staffy-bull-terrier.niceboard.com/f7-new-member-introductions

I don't know your working arrangements but after Bo had his plums off I bought a baby monitor to check what he was up to, so I could be in my study upstairs and watch him downstairs at the same time. Perhaps if you could rig something up to focus on the kitchen you'd catch him in the act, and either tell him to stop before he did it or if too late, tell him to sit and stay then go and clean up before he applied the brown lipstick.

Hello. This may be happening for many reasons - it sounds like he is toileting in the house when you leave because he is distressed at being left - but then may have a previous association with being disciplined with toileting in the house (perhaps in his previous home) so he eats it to hide the evidence as such. It sounds to me like habit/learnt behaviour - so you need to break this habit.

I would advise a strict routine, and restrictions in place so that he cannot go to the kitchen when you're not monitoring - in the place of crate training, baby gates or simply shutting doors. Ensure that you let him out into the garden on a regular basis - praising when he toilets in the correct behaviour (and teaching a toilet command) and cleaning up immediately after he goes. When indoors, where possible keep him in sight, and if not pop him in his crate (as long as he's been crate trained) with a stuffed kong/chew to keep him occupied. Two decent walks a day to try to encourage him to toilet on walks.

Wainwrights is a good food, but it may not be right for him. Some dogs are sensitive to certain proteins/ingredients. Would you consider raw feeding? There is a brand of raw that is really easy to feed called nutriment which is a good price and great for new feeders. Did the vets do blood tests aswell as a visual check over to ensure there were no problems internally?