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Dog eats twigs and leaves

1.8K views 6 replies 6 participants last post by  mcdavis  
#1 ·
My dog eats small twigs and leaves. He'll be sniffing around the ground, and boom he's eaten some little thing. How can I get him to stop doing this? I could teach him "leave it", but he eats the stuff so quickly I'm not sure that will help.
 
#5 ·
How much is he eating? A lot?

I may not be in the majority but my dogs will sometimes eat small pieces of sticks, leaves, etc. They also regularly graze on grass and weeds/bushes. As long as they aren't doing it excessively, I pretty much leave them alone.

However if your dog is eating a lot/getting sick, you'd need to work on cleaning up the yard and removing as much of the items he is eating. Keep him on leash and work on a leave it command with him - but just removing this kind of debris as much as you can will be the easiest fix.
 
#6 ·
Our dog does the same, she'll eat anything she can find. We live in a townhouse neighborhood and there's no way to control what ends up on the ground when we take her for walks.
Twice in the last three weeks she's thrown up A LOT in the house. She gagged and hacked for a few hours and tried to lick everything on the floor in the house. Dust, her own hair sheddings, anything...
 
#7 ·
Despite numerous efforts to stop him our dog used to eat sticks, branches, etc. then he got a splinter in his mouth that got infected and needed antibiotics. I am still training leave but it depends on the object, so most of the time I watch the ground to spot the sticks before he does, but if there's a big risk I use a basket muzzle because I don't want to risk infection again.