When do they stop eating EVERYTHING?
 

Rocks, twigs, burrs, leaves, it all goes in Nikko's mouth. As he's grown older, it's gotten a little bit better, and he actually ingests less of the "inedible" things that go into his mouth, but I still catch him eating really dumb stuff fairly often.

Does anybody remember at approximately what age your puppy stopped being a canine vacuum machine?

Or perhaps does anyone out there have a dog who never grew out of that? I realize they'll always like to put some stuff in their mouths, but from the older dogs I've known, I know that at some point most of them cool off with the habit fairly dramatically.

Lauren & Nikko

Oh My! I can't wait to see what the YT'ers say to this one! Everytime Ginger goes outside she chews sticks, bark, mulch, etc. I try to make her stop but she just won't quit. I think I have seen some shreds in her poop. I told the vet about it. I'm trying to give her other options outside as far as toys but she loves the mulch nuggets the best. What to do? :confused::confused::confused:

Piper is 10 months old now and she still picks up everything and tries to eat it. I too hope she will eventually out grow it. I had a male Yorkie for 13 years before Piper and I don't remember him being this oral fixated. But then again it's been 13 years since I've had a puppy and I probably have forgotten a lot of his puppyhood.

I wonder if it takes the boys longer? I have 3 girls, the youngest is a little over one, and she still does it, but my other girls are not vacuums anymore really not interested in putting every imaginable object, twig, etc into their mouthes, they are 3 and 13.

But! My boy is almost 2 1/2 and he still thinks if it will fit in his mouth, it must be edible :eek:

Be careful with the mulch! Some mulches are toxic to our little furbabies :(

http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/yor...-dogs-fyi.html

Gus is 14 months & is an eating machine.

Neighbor's mulch :mad: :thumbdown "leaking" through the fence. I'll never know if it caused some of the issues he exibits.

MY DW thought earth worms were healthy, but some are infected with parasites. Guess what the vet found in Gus' urine sample - a parasite egg.

OMG,OMG, OMG! Thanks for posting this. I don't know if we have chocolate mulch or not but I will do all I can to keep her off of it! I just told my husband about this and he is going to help me keep her out of it too. Any ideas anyone? We have tons of mulch. What do I do to make it less attractive?

I remember a thread about Chocolate mulch making a Yorkie violently ill. PLease be extremely careful with this toxic poison.
My Suzi loves to put everything in her mouth too! Not a day goes by that she grabs something in her mouth that i have to get away from her! My little stinker knows when she has something that is A No No ! SHe runs away with it in her mouth, and I have to 'corner her" Then sometimes, when I get close enough to reach her, she will run away again. Suzi is something else.
We have to be careful because She now knows how to go on the kitchen table:eek:

My plan, for Gus, was to let him have lot's of play time in the fenced back yard. However, because he constantly eats stuff off the ground, I can't let him loose in the yard. What a disappointment for both of us.

Squirt has never been a problem this way.

Ah yes, everything imaginable goes in the mouth. Today Bonnie brought in a leaf, and as we speak she is torturing a lady bug. YUK. Yesterday, she tore the bow out of Patsy's hair, and proudly pranced around the house with it.:rolleyes:

I don't think they will ever quit eating any and everything! LOL!;)

Hey there Nikko! Your mommy posted in training about your love of leather scraps.

I guess there's an upside to having a picky yorkie. I have a pretty hard time getting Thor to eat tasty things, and he has no interest in the non-tasty.

I have another suggestion for people with four-legged hoovers: maybe you can try making a rule that your dog can NEVER eat anything off the floor or the ground. If it's not a dish or in your hand, he must Leave It or Drop It. If you are really consistent and strict with this, it might work. It's worth a shot!

Yep, my Abby is a little "vacuum" also.
When I have her outside she picks up everything.
I would think she would get tired of me taking things out of her mouth:)

wow I didn't think the little dogs did that. My Sophie never ate or chewed anything but food and bones. she is my first little dog.:animal-pa

Molly is 3 and a half years old and still vacuums up anything that she thinks is vaguely edible...and a lot that definitely isnt! :eek:

gosh! i wish milu was an eating machine! she is so darn skinny.

you should teach your baby the 'leave it' command.

whenever milu gets a hold of something i don't want her to have. i just tell her to leave it, and then i take it away from her, and give her a treat for leaving it!

Oh My Gosh! Baxter, who we lovingly call "Orick" or "Hoover" is 16 months old. He will chase bugs, catch grasshoppers in mid flight and before I can rescue it he has it halfway digested. Then there are the pinecones, whirleygigs from the Maple trees, and his favorite of all is Acorns. Along with sticks leaves and anything else that comes into his path. Someone told me to teach him the "leave it" command. Well that is all I would be saying to him alllllllll day long. I have just resigned myself that he is a little vacuume with legs. Right now with 3 feet of snow life is somewhat ok outside, but when it starts to melt and he sees all that debris out there I know I am in for a world of trouble. I guess I will have to keep him on a leash in the yard until I am able to get it all cleaned up.

Noelle does this with almost anything that can fit in her wee little mouth! But only outside. She picks up a stick and looks at me sideways to see if I am watching. It's like she knows she's doing something she shouldn't be and is trying to sneak. Then when I go to take it off of her she turns in circles!

Lilly will be 2 years old in July & she still picks up stuff if she sees it laying on the floor. If I drop something I still have to be quick to pick it up or she gets it. She's not as bad as she was when she was a wee one but she's still a vaccum.

Pao stops at about 1 year old I think. He was't much of a chewer but when we go out, he loves to pick up the odd stuff from the ground..he loves grass too and I think he got worms once from grass or soemthing he ate off the grass eew but he was never interested in sticks nor leaves. He doesn't do it now that he is 2.5 going to 3 yrs old soon but he will lick at other dog's pee!!! Yes that is right other dog's pee and that is super gross!!!

Deep Throat
 

Gus is also good at hiding things in his mouth.

http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/gen...ep-throat.html

Darn it... I was really hoping for the answer, "oh, mine stopped eating everything after about a year old." Or better yet, "Yeah, after they're done teething, the vacuum cleaner problem seems to disappear." So much for that, lol!

I should have known there would be a wide variety in the suctioning quality of our furry little vacuums. I'll still hold out some hope though, that as Nikko gets older, he'll stop eating as many rocks - it has gradually been getting a bit better over the last couple of months, so hopefully he can keep going with that trend.

We do "drop it" which usually works, but doesn't keep him from picking up the dumb stuff to begin with, and obviously then doesn't work if we're not around to say it. Quicksilver brought up a good point - it is probably partially our fault that he vacuums things off the ground because we used to feed him his kibble by tossing it across the kitchen floor for him to chase, and now we often put his kibble in a kong or toilet paper tube which he knocks around and chews on until the kibbles drop out onto the floor for him to eat.

I suppose I should just be thankful that he doesn't have any interest in chewing on power cords, TV remotes, or carpet. :thumbup: Hopefully he'll survive a few rocks and twigs, and the occasional bugs and moths (he caught one today out of mid-air!).

Lauren & Nikko

My vet recommended a type of muzzle to prevent picking stuff up from the ground, but I ignored the recommendation.

The "leave it" command can work great if practiced and taught. One of the puppies in our training class picked up a pill his daddy dropped on the floor:eek: He dropped it immediately on the "leave it" command. Although his daddy said it could have been the frantic tone of his voice that did it, but it probably saved his life!
P.S. That puppy was a "Yorkie"!

LOL i was wondering the same thing....hahaha

You might want to read this before you get too nervous. snopes.com: Cocoa Mulch Danger to Dogs The bad product should have been pulled several years ago, and the new cocoa mulch is said not to contain any THEOBROMINE which is the dangerous part. Here's an article by the company that makes one brand. -- Pet Safe

I think Joey was about 1 1/2 half before he stopped putting everything in his mouth.

Thanks so much, Nancy1999! Very interesting read. It does make me feel a little better.

I don't even know if I have chocolate mulch to begin with. We buy our mulch by the trailer load at a local mulch company so it's not a certain brand so to speak. I still don't think it's great that Ginger shreds when chewing and swallows tiny pieces. I'm going to try to teach the "leave it command". But at least in the mean time if she gets a few more pieces, I won't freak out. :)

Ginger is still a puppy and investigates everything in the house that is on the floor. I have puppy proofed but still watch out for things that end up on the floor. (That's alot with a 4 year old daughter.) Outside, she races around and picks up bark, sticks, leaves .... pretty much anything she can find and either chews it or runs with it like a game. She even trys to chomp on a plant or two but I'm all over her about that since we all saw what happened to poor Baby Chloe who ingested some sago palm. I yell "No" and clap real loud. It startles her so bad she always looks at me like I'm nuts. By then she has forgotten about the plant and is off for something else. Crazy dog!

My girls both are doing the same thing. EVERYTHING goes in the mouth. It wouldn't be so bad if they just chewed stuff but they eat it. I have to watch them so closely. Last night they tried to catch a tree frog on the side of the house so I nudged it up higher on the house so they couldn't reach it. I wonder if they would have eaten that too??? Yuck. They searched for that thing for 15 minutes wondering where it went.