Eating Dirt...what To Look For

[fourofem]

From what he yaked up in the kitchen this afternoon after I got home, it looks like Kevin ate about a pound of clay today (through a muzzle!!!). Looking at his muzzle, his nose, and his toenails, he was pretty busy. I thought he had pretty much emptied his stomach and gave him s small dinner which he yaked up about 10 minutes later and was reconsuming by the time I found it. I don't have any poop guards for my muzzles and I'm thinking now that he has a little taste for digging, he's going to do it again tomorrow. Is there something I can put in there that will serve the same purpose until I can get my hands on one. Back to the H&M question, he seems fine now but is there anything I should be looking for after obviously consuming that much clay? He's had a poop, which looked pretty normal.

[Trudy]

pull out some duct tape and tape the end of the muzzle.

[silverfish]

What should you look for? I'm tempted to say 'holes in the garden'!

 

Sorry. We had a dirt eater - actually we've had two, but Susan was sick, and likely it was just that her system was seriously off. The vet thought she was compensating for mineral loss by eating dirt, but usually that's not the case. Usually they just ... like to do it.

 

Little Jack though, I became convinced he was digging for grubs. We have a lot of beetles and crickets here whose larvae develop in the top two inches or so of earth, and Jack would dig, snort, look intently at the grass, dig and eat. It wasn't random with him. And he was one of those greyhounds who are constantly on the look-out for food. The only thing that stopped him (temporarily) was covering the place where he was digging, but sooner or later he'd find somewhere else. I always knew he'd been eating dirt by the earth and grit in his water bowl.

 

Normally there's not a great problem for the dog if they eat dirt, but obviously that changes if they eat dirt contaminated with chemicals or other toxins, and if he's eating huge amounts of clay, that's going to bind him up. Also, if he swallows stones with it, he could be in trouble.

 

I've never used muzzles in the garden for my dogs, but yes, I've heard duct tape will make a temporary 'stool guard' for one.