Hi there,

Ok so I just saw someone's post on their dog eating a 10 ft leash. That is something my dog would do. I would definitely say that my year old GSP is food motivated, well actually he is food obsessed. This morning alone he ate my son's match box big rig truck, and some string. It doesn't seem to matter how much exercise he gets he will still eat everything. He reminds me of a goat. He even eats the nuts off the nut trees on our property. He does really well with marker training, because there is food involved. The vet said he was getting more than enough food, he just has an obsessive issue. Maybe he has a tape worm? I give him those raw hide bones, and he will eat through a medium size one in an afternoon. How do you stop this weird goat like obsessive behaviour?

Any input would be great...and totally feel free to laugh at my goat dog.

What does his exercise routine consist of (details please )?

How old is the dog?

 Quote: Niomi Smith

What does his exercise routine consist of (details please )?

How old is the dog?

And in additon to Niomi's questions, I just want to clarify, GSP=German Short Haired Pointer?

Hi,

Yes he is a German Shorthaired Pointer, He gets two 45 minute walks a day, plus an hour of running and fetching in our yard, which is about a 1/4 of an acre. This usually invloves marker training. The walks are up and down hills. When he is done his walks he gets his food, with a buster cube to make he brain work. He is heat senstive, to the point he will throw up, its just starting to cool down now, so I will have him doing some agility training, if I can get him over his hatred of wet weather. I think part of his behaviour comes from the breeder we got him from. When the litter was still with her, they would rip around the house and chew everything in sight. Specifically plastic. We didn't know this until the day when we went to go pick him up and saw this in action. She had told us that the plastic lids to ice cream buckets were great for teething. Needless to say we never let him have those, but he still loves plastic and paper to chew on (and tissues). It also doesn't help that I have a 16 month old little boy.

Hope that helps

sorry I thought I mentioned it my first post...he is two weeks shy of being a year old.

I also have a food obsessed dog, thankfully he has outgrown most of his goat stage and only eats edible things for the most part. Our ideas of edible do occasionally differ though.

The only food he has ever turned down was celery tops and even that he carried around and nibbled on before deciding he didn't want it.

Just by chance have you had a full blood panel done on him? I would want to check his thyroid levels just to be sure. While I was at it I would have him checked for worms just to put your mind at ease.
(I did this too and mine was fine, and parasite free)

Elissa, this is something that he will probably outgrow, for the most part, but I think for now you have to manage him and his environment closely so that he is not given the opportunity to chew inappropriate items. If he is allowed to chew things that you don't want him chewing, it becomes a self-rewarding behavior.

Do you have a crate for him for those times that he can't be directly supervised?

If you can't supervise him outside all the time, you might consider a tether, where you could leave him out with something good to chew for a short period of time, but not give him free reign to the yard.

Some ideas for things to chew on:
Frozen Kong toy stuffed with moist dog food
Everlasting toys (sold here)stuffed with the chew thing that goes in the middle
Marrow bones, if he's a nibbler and not a bone cracker.

PS, I can't open your link without a password! We'd love to see a pic of him!

Hi guys thanks so much for your input. It is nice to know that he will eventually outgrow this behaviour. We had been told by GSP members in the CKC that this particular breed is human food obsessed by nature, which seems to be proving true. But it is nice to have some hope. Tobias recently has been checked for thyroid and worms. He came down with beaver fever earlier this summer and had to have a blood panel done.

He is crate trained and goes in there when he is unsupervised.

We do not leave him unsupervised in our yard. We have a few neighbors who like to think that it is ok to feed him, when they take their dogs for a walk. And since we live in the walking path of an elementary school, we don't want him to be teased by the children. He also broke his metal tie out. Oh yeah he snapped that baby in half. The trees that we could tie him to are the nut trees that he eats. When we first moved to this property we had him out on a tie out and all he would do is cry, bark and howl. He still does. He is actually quite a wimpy hunting dog. Doesn't like to be cold, or wet. Oh well we love him anyway. Tobias only seems to manage to get things he is not suppose to eat, when he steals them out of my 16 1/2 month old son's hand or just when I turn my back for a second.

Thank you Lynne for the chew ideas. The only toy he has not destroyed is his kong. I will have to look at those everlasting toys. Oh yeah I have changed the settings so anyone can view the pics of Tobias.

What is beaver fever?

Can I also ask what his diet is?

 Quote: Jennifer Lee

What is beaver fever?

I can help with this one Jennifer. I'm sure this term stemmed from us Canadians. It's the giardia cyst.

As you may know, in BC here especially, we have a lot of beavers that make their homes in our mountain streams. The Giardia parasite is almost always found in them when someone decides to run tests on a dead one. We have a lot of hikers that think it's OK to drink out of fresh BC streams and this is not the case at all. They usually end up quite ill. We just say they've caught the Beaver Fever.

A little easier to say than Giarida for some of us backwoods folks and generally does stem from the beavers in the streams. Of course many other wildlife carry this parasite as well, the beavers are just the ones playing in the water so they must be the ones infecting it.

I know, strange explanation, but it is what it is.. lol