Has anyone ever had a stone eating dog? Do they ever grow out of it? Is it a habit or do you think there is anything you can do about it? One of my pups has started doing this a few weeks ago...it started off with the occasional stone which wold be later sicked-up with a clatter on our slate floor! However we are now finding him bringing up about a kg of stones a day and some of them are 4 inches long!!!

Oh Gosh Sam, is he on a suicide mission?

Of course you know of the dangers, I doubt it is dietry dificiency as you are experienced in that, so I guess you will have to distract him from his new hobby give him some new toys/chews/bones and perhaps cover up the stones with a wood slat or something until he forgets all about stones. He obviously thinks them great fun at the moment and doesn't understand the dangers.

Hi sam,
my dog used to 'chew / suck' on stones!!
He used to put them in his mouth and just sort of 'chew on them!'
He did grow out of it, although he never used to be sick with it, xx

When my boy was a pup he use to eat stones, but he did eventually grow out of it!!! trying to catch him at it was the hardest

cover them up??? we have an acre garden that they roam in all day and there are stones everywhere!!! The worst part is that we have never actually caught him in the act of eating them

Muzzle?  GSD at farm has to permanently have basket muzzle on as she just hoovers horse shit.  Stops everyone in their tracks too as they come down drive and assume that she is vicious!    WRONG!

> GSD at farm has to permanently have basket muzzle on as she just hoovers horse shit

lol the greedy piggy!!

My old dog is a stone/brick/patio slab eater
We got him when he was 4 years old, so I don't know if the previous owners actually tried anything to stop him, or just encouraged him. When we got him his canine teethe were ground down from stone eating. Unfortunately we have never managed to break the habbit. He has only ever tried to eat stones from the garden, to the point of digging for them and removing large loose stones from a cotswold wall and tryng to loosen patio slabs . We have concreted every possible loose stone/patio slab/brick into place and dug up as many as possible before re-turfing. This is the only thing that has helped - making sure there are none available.

Hopefully, as yours is a pup you should be able to break the habbit. Don't encourage it in anyway, providing an iteresting distraction (ie. fave toy) may help. Apart from the obvious internal problems from blockages etc. it can also damage thier teeth.

EDIT ; re-read your post, yours is a dog not a puppy? oh dear, maybee worth a muzzle then.

This sounds potentially very dangerous, is he a spaniel ?  my friend had one that she never cured and he went out in a muzzle after 3 serious op's to remove them, be careful, no one seems to know why they do it, a friends goldie used to carry them about and drop them on your feet  ouch

my dog did this when he was younger but doesnt do it now

I had a stone eating cocker spaniel pup and he died before he was 9 months old. I'm paranoid about stones now!

One of my dogs would chew stones when he was a puppy he still does sometimes and I know it isn't because he needs something to chew as he is on a raw diet with plenty of raw meaty bones, he also has lots of toys too.  He doesn't swallow them though.

My dog also chews on stones, but she spits them out again.  She also has bones and hide chews so I don't know why she does it, it's not every day, just occasionally.  I would be worried if she was eating them, but like you say, how on earth do you stop them without concreting everything in sight?

Ive heard of it but never encountered it luckly, have to treat it the same as poo eating, prevention is better then cure!

When you let them out, watch them closly (hide round a corner if you have too! lol) and when you see he is chewing a stone or just licking one, appear, shout 'no' so he knows you have caught him and repeat till he has learned, could help.

Just have to ask alicey - What breed of dog is that on your avator? He is gooooorgeous!!

One of ours did during teething unfortunately he chose pea gravel and swallowed more than he chewed, if its teething we used to freeze a tea towel for him to rag about with.. Thats all i can think of as he was a bugger for going outside and chewing on it..

My friends retriever did this, and they allowed it to carry on until the dog had had three ops and then it died at the fourth op....all because they thought it was cruel to muzzle the dog. If I were you I would  muzzle this dog....once they start eating stones, on the whole they carry on doing it.