Why does my dog eat poop right after I feed him

Many dogs need to toilet within 30 minutes of eating because a full stomach naturally prompts movement further down the digestive tract, so fresh waste often appears at almost the exact time the dog is still in an eating, food seeking mindset, which increases the odds of investigating it.

Freshly produced waste can retain more of the original food's smell than waste that has sat outside for a while, which may make it more immediately interesting to a dog's nose compared with older waste elsewhere in the yard.

Walking the dog on a leash immediately after meals until toileting happens, then cleaning up right away, removes the opportunity during exactly the window when it is most likely to occur, without needing any other behavioral intervention.

Because the underlying cause here is largely about timing and opportunity rather than a deeper behavioral driver like boredom or anxiety, this particular version of the habit tends to respond well and quickly to the leash and immediate cleanup routine, often within a week or two of consistent application. This makes it one of the more straightforward coprophagia patterns to resolve, and owners dealing specifically with this after meal timing should not need to layer in the more involved enrichment or training focused strategies that other versions of the habit sometimes require, which makes this a relatively encouraging and manageable pattern to be dealing with compared with other versions.