# Eating horse poop



## Angelina (Aug 11, 2011)

I know that if a dog eats horse poop and the horse was recently wormed that it can make the dog sick or even kill him. That is why it is extremely important to me that Cannella (Nellie) listens to my "leave it" when we are out hiking in the woods (every day). This is the only place I can let her roam off leash so I don't want to have to keep her on leash for these hikes. She has done really good with it, I bring treats and if she backslides and picks up a piece I trade her with treats.....

Unfortunately when it is really fresh she ignores the leave it and tries gobbling it down as fast as possible. For these I have to move her physically away from it with my body and leash her so I try hard to be proactive and scout out the horse poop before we get to it. There are many horses in my neck of the woods, long grass and sometimes I just don't see it.

This is one instance where 100 percent positive reinforcement doesn't seem to work well. I try not to get angry training any of my animals (dog or horse) but am not sure how to get thru to her. I am just reinforcing the "leave it", giving big praise when she does, blocking it with my body ahead of time...but I'm afraid she is catching on and if I wasn't interferring would go for it immediately. Will she ever just ignore it 100% like my Angelina (the pure angel dog) does? Anyone else have this issue? : Is there anything else I could be doing?


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## Elisabeth Kazup (Aug 23, 2008)

This is one thing I never thought of. We worm our horses once a month and the dogs (dh has one too) eat poop on a regular basis meaning they've probably gotten some on the same day as worming. Thanks for the head's up, I'll definitely check into it.

Something else I just thought of: all last summer we fed a daily, feed through wormer so it was in the poop every day.


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## Elisabeth Kazup (Aug 23, 2008)

Found this article:

Warning: Your Dogs, and Ivermectin Dewormer


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