5 month old puppy eating stones on walks

[loumonster]

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Hi. Our 5 month old jackapoo pup is obsessed with eating stones/leaves/feathers/tissues/cigarette butts/plastic on a walk. You name it, its goes in his mouth. We can manage sometimes to distract with a treat and call out drop it - and he will drop, but a lot of the times the item has disappeared down his throat already or he gets incredibly protective over the item and he will not drop it for anything.

We find so much stuff in his poop that he is clearly able to pass through but I want to understand why he might be doing this and what we can do to distract him, and what happens when he swallows something really big that we may not have noticed, could this get stuck in his system? We've taken to taking him out after a meal in case its hunger thats driving the behaviour.

It's getting very tiresome watching his mouth the entire time, and I'm not so keen on yanking at the lead mid walk to pull him away from the items. We walk around the streets near home and it's not just one particular area he does it in.

Should I not be stressing about it and just letting him do this in the hope that he gets bored of eating non-food items?

 

[JoanneF]

Sorry but I think you do need to be concerned. Puppies are little monsters for exploring with their mouths but they can swallow things that cause trouble. I don't say that to scare you, but it could become a problem.

Have you taught 'leave it,' and 'drop it'?

And, a muzzle might help. Introduced properly it's just like another piece of kit, like a harness, so not something to dread.