I am desperately searching for helpful suggestions on how to get our Golden Retriever to stop eating her own feces! It totally disgusts me anyway but I am more concerned about it because of our 21 month old daughter and her being around her. I worry about our dog licking her and our daughter touching things that our dog has had in her mouth after eating her feces. Is there reason to worry about this and what can we do to get her to stop this disgusting habit?

Hi, Amy,
Sorry to hear about your problem with your dog eating its faeces. Not a pretty sight, and it clearly upsets you more than it does her!
The first thing to do is to get her throroughly checked out by your vet. The problem may be that there is something wrong with her physically. If not, you have a behavioural problem to cope with, which may well in fact be easier to deal with.
The best advice I can offer is to get her into a routine - always take her out straight after a meal, remove the faeces immediately so that she does not get access to them. Never leave them lying in your garden - take her out on a lead and pull her away if she makes any attempt to turm to consume her motions. As soon as she has defaecated distract her attention with a tidbit of something that she likes - reward is alway better than punishment in cases like this. If you have been punishing her or chastising her she may have associated it with the passing of faeces, and not the eating of them, so she tries to remove th evidence!

I've got 3 golden retrievers, and one of them eats the faeces of the other two if I don't get a chance to stop her. It's not unusual. I just cope with it by calling her away ( but I don't have a toddler to complicate matters).

There are tablets available from the vet called 'Deter' - have a word with your vet about it.

Good luck.