Pooch poos in the night

[Righthandcider]

We have two dogs. A 7 year old female wire haired vizsla and a 3 year old male wire haired vizsla / lab cross. Both neutered, not related.

The boy eats three times a day - 9am, 12pm and 4pm. The girl twice at 9am and 4pm.

They have three walks a day, with the last one at 6ish.

I'm looking for advice as they both regularly poo on the floor at night. Which is nice. If we take them out last thing they may wee but they won't poo. It just seems that most nights they don't need it until the small hours at which point they let loose!

They eat good quality kibble. We can't feed raw owing to minimal freezer space.

Any ideas how we could fix this nocturnal poo problem?

Thank you!

@Righthandcider my lurcher does this, it's not every night but there doesn't seem to be any correlation between what we do and him not pooing. Sometimes I think he actually enjoys a nice poo in the warm house. We also feed at about 3.30pm.

If they were mine I’d try sleeping downstairs with them for a night to see if they bother to wake you up - or take them to bed with you . How do they usually communicate that they need to go outside during the day .

Our current Vizsla (have had 4) went through a phase like this for a few weeks.
We resolved it by bringing her second meal forward to 2pm, and adding in an extra opportunity to toilet in the evening.

7am - walk
8am - meal
1pm - walk
2pm - meal
6pm - mooch around for toilet break
11pm - mooch around for toilet break.

We stuck to this for a good while and were eventually able to walk and feed her a bit later without issue.

Good luck, they are wonderful dogs.

We solved this by changing food. Both dogs were on Millie's wolfheart but we went to Forthglade dried complete. I changed as we were having issues running out all the time but this was a very happy co-incidence.

Our sprocker (3) was very happy to poo overnight but this completely stopped it.

No idea why but just happy not to have to come downstairs at 6am and start heaving!

STOP FEEDING YA DOG

Don't blame him!!!

Very interesting!

Brilliant, thank you!

Sounds like a habit rather than an accident or sudden need.

Dogs really are creatures of habit over pooing. The habit can be about place rather than time. (Ours uses the same point in a walk no matter what time the walk.)

Changing the habit might mean changing a few things.
Do they have a lot of space to move around in at night? Perhaps make it smaller - so that they aren't where they have taken to pooing and so that they would have to sleep close to the poo if they did it.

I would gradually scrap the noon feed. A dog his age and size doesn't need it. I would gradually move the breakfast feed much earlier, say 6.30/7.00 and make that their main meal, so two thirds of their food then and the rest at 5.30/6.00.

Thank you all for your replies. There's a lot of advice here with different things to try, and we've started by going down to two meals, with one at 9am and another at 2.30 pm. We did an extra short walk at ten as well.

Will give this a week or two and if it doesn't work try feeding later, then failing that we'll try constricting space.

Fingers crossed. And hopefully legs crossed in the case of the dogs.

Success! We woke up to a pooless house!!!

Could be a fluke, but we have high hopes and will stick with the new regime and pray it continues to work.

Thank you all again!

Great news OP!

Ours is a medium breed but she has her last meal at about 9/10 and poos on her morning walk.

Thanks, that's interesting. What time does she have her other meal?

I know it appears you have cracked it which is amazing but just wanted to add our experience in case it happens again? Our 2yo female staffy started doing this multiple times a night a while ago. It turned out (by power of deduction and trial and error) that she was anxious due to a change in routine (husband suddenly deployed). I crated her again and I think she must've felt more secure, as she never messed her crate and didn't ask to be let out overnight and slept through again.

Thank you, that's really useful to know,

Glad to hear that things are going well OP.
(If you are worried: reducing space isn't cruel - many dogs do feel more secure with close boundaries. )

Great, thank you!

I would be a bit cautious feeding early especially if you are worried about bloat. Are they fed kibble?

Kibble takes about12 hours to be fully digested. If you see a dog be sick several hours after eating kibble the vomit will be pretty much fully formed kibble that has swollen.

So only giving 4.5 hours between feeding is a big pressure on their stomachs.

It is more usual to have a longer time between feeding at least 8 hours but 10/12 is better.

However if it works for you

That is a very good point, thank you.

Hi all, just to say thanks again and that we've had clean floors every morning. We're feeding twice, once at 6.30am ish and again at 2.30pm, with an extra walk last thing. Success!

great news!