dog bad habbit

Question
my 8 mth old female dog has a bad habit of eating our cat's poop,in the litter box.no matter how fast we remove it,she still gets into it at times.does anyone know what and how i can get her to stop.she in new and a rescue dog from mexico.i would appreciate any input,thanks Greg

Answer
Hi Greg,

I have one word for you: management. You need to find a place to put the litterbox where the cat can still get to it but the dog cannot. It is a natural behavior for dogs to eat poop unfortunately so training it out of them is hard, not impossible but hard. You can try to make the poop not palatable to the dog by feeding the cat some of the marketed products to stop this habit. The idea is that the poop doesn't taste good to the dog. But I warn you, some dogs actually don't care and will continue to eat poop.  You can try to set up the dog by dousing the cat poop with hot sauce (Tabasco) and letting her try it but again, there are some dogs that like hot sauce.  AT 8 months old, I'd be hard pressed to say that your dog has earned the right to have freedom of your entire house so putting up baby gates to confine her to the areas she can have access to (which obviously would NOT include where the litter box is) is a wise idea.

Jaz