I have a female Doberman who's 7 or 8 years old. We got her from a rescue when she was 2 or 3. She had been used for breeding purposes and then dumped when she got sick with heartworms and a severe case of kennel cough. She has an enlarged heart now because of her previous illnesses, but other than the occasional cough, that doesn't seem to slow her down. Right now she's at the vet recovering from her *5th* intestinal blockage. This is insane and I don't know how much more her guts can take. Her first blockage was a "bezore" which is a naturally forming concretion of matter--in her case fecal matter and hair--in the intestine. It's rare for dogs to get them. This was when she was on a kibble diet. We later switched over to a raw diet. she got another blockage that was made up of grass and leaves. A month later, she got another one from a rawhide. OK, no more rawhides. We then switched back to kibble out of fear that the scarring in her intestine would block bones. That was fine for a while, but then she started having chronic diarreah. She was scoped, biospies were taken, nothing found. Vet thought it was diet related. We tried different kibbles and nothing worked. We went back to raw diet and give her only chicken necks that are chopped into small pieces as the RMBs part of her diet. She no longer gets the runs. Then last May she has another blockage. We worried it was because of a bone. Nope. She ate a piece of paper towel--Bounty no less. So we start making sure no paper or tissue of any kind is where she can grab it. Then the other day she started showing all the classic signs of a blockage: throwing up, looking depressed, moving from place to place, digging at her bed. Back to the vet's she goes. This time the blockage was pieces of flimsy plastic, which could be from a grocery bag, and grass. We're going to get rid of the grass in the fenced area where she is let out when we cannot walk her and I guess we'll be getting waste baskets with the lids on them, but other than that, what can we do to keep this dog from eating weird things? We have a 19-yesr old JRT and I'm beginning to think the JRT is going to out-last the Doberman.

Sorry for the length of this, I just had to vent.

Kitty S.

Crate the dog when you're not around or put it in a dog run (if you don't have one you can build one)so there's nothing to chew/bite/ingest. If you can't/won't do this and the dog is getting sick repeatedly I think you know as well as anybody else here what the unfortunate, but obvious solution is......sorry..