Dog Community

Eating weeds

Posted : 4/30/2010 4:39:12 PM

Newt is a confirmed weed eater. she will go out and grab as many as she can, we scold her..she'll run off, then grab more. Yes, we do cut them down, but there are still little weed stubbles..it is a typical desert yard..mostly dirt, which apparently fosters growth of all the little weeds blowing around the neighborhood.

I'd not normally care, but she then gets a gurgly stomach, diarrhea, pukes, and/or poops out weeds. Or any combo of those. A gurgly stomach makes her eat more weeds...so it is a bit of a cycle. I have no idea if an icky tummy makes her want to eat weeds in the first place, or if she likes weeds and that causes the icky tummy...at any rate, she need knock it off.

I have no idea how to get her to stop eating weeds..if we shoo her too much, she gives up and goes inside without pottying. There are no basket muzzles her size, and I am not keen on a hold your mouth closed type of muzzle just to go out...in addition she is pouty and I can totally see her refusing to do anything out there while wearing one

I tried giving her some veggies and spinach...she said that's just gross. And growing green things die at he sight of me, so a pot of cat grass type stuff won't work. (I have tried...it really just dies immediately)

Newt eats TOTW, the fish variety (as that's what everyone else eats) and some TOTW canned bison formula on top. She seems to be doing well on it...coat growing in nicely (even on ears and tail :) ) good skin, hungry for meals but not starving the rest of the time.

JackieG

Posted : 4/30/2010 6:15:39 PM

My dogs are confirmed grazers but they don't get tummy upsets. They do occasionally get a dangler which freaks them all out. :)

Maybe you'll have to take her out on a lead. Is she a nervous dog? It could be some displacement behavior or maybe obsessive behavior or a little of both. Or maybe she just likes the taste but her tummy can't handle it. lol I would probably try keeping her on lead and hoping the behavior will be extinguished in time. I had to treat Belle like a young puppy and kept her on lead for a loooooong time because she was so busy doing other things she wouldn't potty. We walked around and around, on lead, for many months.

kpwlee

Posted : 4/30/2010 7:25:30 PM

Bugsy may be part goat - well with the amount of grass and weeds he eats it would seem so.

He has at times been obsessive about it, those are the times when he seems to do it to quell something and his insides sound horrible. He hasn't done that in ages.

he does eat grass daily

Dawnben

Posted : 5/3/2010 7:21:32 PM

I used to run a boarding facility and had 3 acres of land to graze on, all of the dogs ate grass but only certain kinds. The regular grass and dandelion greens are used to make them purge. They eat them when they have a stomach ache. The other grasses such as oat grass and a few others they eat like salad. My hound has always grazed but about 1 year ago he started doing it daily and throwing up almost every day. He had been a vegetarian for about 3 years and I changed him to a meat diet because we moved where I could not get a vegetarian dog food. The stomach problems started almost immediately I thought is just might take time for him to adjust but it got to the point that he had chronic gastritis. I found out that my dog was meat intolerant. I started cooking vegetarian meals for him and in about a week the stomach problem went away and has never returned. So maybe it is the kind of meat or maybe the meat its self. It does not sound like he is doing it for the greens because he is eating the kind that make him purge. The limited diets with 2 ingredients are good because it limits the things they can be allergic to . Sounds like he is on the mend.