How many times a day does your dog poo?

[JustGettingStarted]

And is there any way to reduce/consolidate them?

My small dog poops 4 or 5 times a day. Not huge volumes of poop. I have to take him out for a walk for this and it always takes a while. He has to walk rapidly first to move his bowels I think.

The first two happen on the morning walk and he's usually done both within 40 minutes. He'll poo within 5 or 10 minutes then again in another 20 to 30 minutes. The morning walk is an hour or more. This is the most predictable walk/poo of the day.

Then in the middle of the day I'll take him for a quick walk so he can sniff and wee. Sometimes he will poo within a short time. Sometimes he will act like he needs to poo but won't unless I walk him for an hour or something. Maybe he just won't poo or maybe I give up/run out of time before he poos.

Then there's usually two poos in the evening. It can take an hour or so. Sometimes he will only poo once in that hour. Sometimes I'll take him out to poo once and take him out again in a couple of hours and maybe he will poo then. Maybe he won't!

All of these walks take a minimum of 15 minutes. Most take significantly longer. (He might poo 20 minutes from home so then it's 20 minutes back.)

I often take him on a non poo-ductive walk and then he mithers to go a couple of hours later. It might take 6 walks ranging from 30 minutes to an hour + to get him done for the day.

I don't mind walking my dog. I like the long morning walk. But I don't know how I can get my wfh job done if I'm having to take breaks for indeterminate lengths of time all day long.

Does anyone have experience getting their dog to be more regular?

I was feeding him 3x a day and now I'm splitting his food into two feeds in hopes of reducing the number of bowel movements. I don't care about the volume of his poos, but the frequency/regularity.

Two to three times, and I only feed them once a day (and a chewie snack in the morning).
Meals three times a day is too much! No wonder your dog is a poo machine!

Hopefully twice a day will be better.

I don't feed him too much food overall - I carefully weigh his food - but I hope that splitting it into two meals will be better.

I can't believe how many times your all feeding your dogs 🤦🏻‍♀️ I have 5 and they are fed only in the morning. Unless you all have puppies you've no need to feed 2/3 times a day 🤯

@fluffypooch

I think many of us feed our dogs twice a day as it's a bloody long wait if only fed once a day !

There's really no need. Mine have raw fruit or veg as a snack.

Mine has dry food. He's always got food in his dish. He's not a greedy dog and only eats when he's hungry, which is generally around 8 in the morning and 9 at night.

It's actually recommended to feed your dogs twice a day.

So there’s a few things that come to mind for me.

My adult dogs poo twice a day, the puppy is 4 times a day.

my spaniel can sometimes poo a few times on a walk with them getting a bit sloppier. It tends to be excitement. When we walk new places or somewhere she hasn’t been for a while.

But if the dog is often pooing then pooing 20 mins later, the dog might fully emptying their bowels. 2 feed instead of 3 might help. But I would also suggest putting an amount of canned pumpkin (just 100% pumpkin not pumpkin pie mix as it’s got lots of sugar in).

It might help the dog empty their bowels in one go.

If we are on a walk, her preferred formula is x number of poo bags + 1. 😬

Mine goes about 3 times 10m apart at the beginning of his morning walk - it’s only really the size of one proper poo but he is just too excited to stay still for long enough 😂

Occasionally he’ll go again in the afternoon or if he’s done a lot of swimming.

He’s still fed 3 times a day, we’ve had to do that to keep him at a healthy weight

I feed once a day, teatime, she poos on her morning walk. She is a labrador with begging eyes so eats her share of snacks/ leftovers and stolen bits.

Maltipoo - morning and lunchtime. He knows he has to poo within 10 mins max of leaving the house in the morning as I have to get to work, and at lunchtimes it's 40C and he gets carried to a patch of grass and made a huge fuss of for instant performance 😂 because we both want to get back inside ASAP. The ground is too hot for him to walk outside by then. He gets a longer walk in the evening (it's dark by 7.15) but usually doesn't poop.

Mine get fed 3 times a day and normally go twice or three times. Always one in the morning, then they'll either go after lunch and evening, or just once late afternoon. They rarely go on a walk.

Older one has to be fed three times a day to maintain weight so it's easier to keep the younger one on the same schedule. Bigger meals are also more of a risk for bloat which is an issue for some breeds.

What are the poos like? Do they look healthy?
I would worry that the food is not staying in his gut long enough and he is not getting all the goodness out of it.
I would try giving him tree barks powder which helps slow the passage of food through the gut.
You also might want to add fibre to his diet (seaweed supplement or psylium husks or something like that) because it sounds like the stool is not forming well in the gut, ie too many poos but he needs to exercise to get them out.

After that maybe try to improve his gut health with prebiotics.

You also might be feeding him too much food or food that doesn't suit him, grains for instance.

Mine does two a day as a rule. They are a thing of beauty! She suffered very badly with digestive issues at one stage and it is a joy to see her doing healthy looking poo and not having tummy issues.

My dogs have always been fed twice a day, I think it's mean making them wait 24hrs for a meal, it's not hard to split their daily meal allowance into 2 meals.

Mine also has a tendency to bring up a bit of bile in a morning if her belly is empty so there's no way she would cope with one meal. She actually brought up bile this morning because she had her evening meal half an hour earlier than usual, even though she had one of those dehydrated sausage things after at about 9pm. She also had other bits throughout the day

OP my small breed has no more than 3 poos a day but more often than not she will only have 2 and they both happen in a morning. Sometimes she will go again at night but it's very rare.

Two dogs, fed twice a day, three poo sessions a day each.