Dog Eats EVERYTHING - pls help

[Sit Kitty]

My friend's dog has this problem, I am going to do my best to describe the situation, and I would appreciate any feedback, thank you.

Dog is a mixed breed (border-collie X), about ten years old, spayed female, UTD on all shots & wormer
decent kibble diet, with canned food 1x a day
dog is overweight
Dog lives with about ten cats (give or take 5) at any given time
Lives with one owner, no kids, no other dogs
owner works full-time

Dog eats everything. Dog eats right THROUGH tin cans of cat food or dog food, including pieces of the cans. Dog eats garbage, plastic, paper, cardboard, etc. Dog eats bedding fabric, stairs, linolium, etc. Dog eats litter box "treasures" regularly. Dog eats her own stool when she finds it in the back yard.
She eats EVERYTHING. Did I mention that?

Dog has been vet checked for damage caused by eating the more dangerous items and no harm seems to be evident.

Is this some kind of obsessive/compulsive behaviour? Boredom?

Owner claims the dog will not even LOOK at toys, is just not interested. Owner says the dog has NEVER been interested in toys her whole life.

Why would this dog eat everything that isn't nailed down? How is she getting away with this without having damage to her stomach/intestines/etc?
Why would she eat her own stool?

[DogGoneGood]

Anna, you should know that I know longer really believe in a "decent kibble diet". It's either a good diet, or a crappy diet.

I just spent 10 minutes searching through my CWCC binder looking for the small paragraph of notes on Corpophagia (poop eating) but can't seem to find it, so googling will have to do. It's annoying how everything seems to be missing from that binder these days

Ah, I'm glad now that I did look it up on Google, there are some things my wise Master didn't teach me

Pica is a psychological problem that can occur in both cats and dogs, it drives them to eat ANYTHING.

"Pets with pica are known to ingest things like wool, plastic, rubber, wood, non-digestible plant material, and even their own feces. While ingesting some of these items may have no consequence for your pet, others can cause serious intestinal blockages which can be life threatening. In these cases, surgical removal of the object is generally the only treatment option. "

You're right that it is a compulsion. According to this article, Pica is brought on by stress or boredom (it can also be caused by a nutrtion deficiency, which is one of the reasons the dog should be brought to the vet and the owner and vet should discuss Pica). If the dog isn't getting stimulated enough, or something in it's enviroment is stressing it out (saaay... 10+ cats in the house?) it can cause her to have compuslive behavior to try and calm herself down. It's like when Coal chases spots or "sucks" on his blanket. He started out just doing it when he was bored or stressed but then it turned into a compulsion which a lot of consistency and stimulation is the only way to keep it in check.

This article is pretty interesting, I suggest reading it...

www.pets.ca/pettips/pet-tip-151.htm

Oh! I just wanted to add...

How has your friend tried to get the dog interested in toys? Did she just toss it and the dog looked at it and was like "huh?" and the owner gave up?

When I first got Linkin he didn't know what toys were. It wasn't that he wasn't interested, he'd just never been given the chance to learn what they were as a puppy. I spend an afternoon when I first got him throwing the toy across the room and then bringing it back and putting it in his mouth and then attempting to tug on it and throwing it again and so on and so on until finally he got that light bulb moment and realized I was trying to play with him.

Of course, this is probably easier to teach an 8 month old puppy than a 10 year old dog.

[abker17]

Wow, I didn't know animals could have Pica. I've only heard of it in humans. That's interesting.

[charmingnancy]

I totally didn't even read this original post, although it's a few days old, until just now (my bad, my bad ). And, a few days ago, I posted an article about Pica. (Twilight Zone theme)

Yep, I agree with you Shara, about the "decent kibble" thing. I just learned a year ago about the sheer volume of junk that is out there for the uneducated dog owners to feed to their babies. They see that it's cheap, and the company can brag all about how great the food is on the label or on commercials, and they will buy it.

Our dogs have only been eating food that doesn't contain corn for about a year now. Poor Dawber, who will be turning 13 next month, was fed Ol Roy sewage for the first 9 years that we owned him. As you may remember, I made a post when I first joined the forum, asking for advice on why Bo was having such terrible digestive problems. Turns out, he cannot handle corn or flour, period. We have been feeding both dogs Taste of the Wild (which is a top rated food on Dogfoodanalysis.com) for a few months now, and they are doing awesome on it. Dawber has been more energetic the past few months than he has been in a few years. Never ever again will I feed anything less than a 5 star rated food to any dog I own, and I will never recommend anything less to any other dog owner. I convinced my boyfriend's parents to switch their dog's food to a grain free product (they are now feeding their 5 year old cocker Instinct) from "The Good Life Recipe"... corn corn corn...and they thanked me profusely after I schooled them in dog diet.

[DogGoneGood]

Yeah, I noticed your article on Pica and it made me remember this thread and laugh As this was the first I'd heard of it... again, yesterday I was reading this book I got by Dr. Nick Dodman that's all about behavior problems (I don't remember the exact title, but it's an A-Z guide to behavior problems and is REALLY good so far!) and he talked breifly about Pica in the book too! It's like the Mickey Mouse Theory.

I've been attempting to dive into researching nutrition (as you see there's an article in the making that I've been working on; it's slow going though). After reading Ann N. Martin's book "Food Pets Die For" I decided the only food I would trust going into my dogs is meals I prepare myself. Unfortunately they're still on kibble, and not a good one at that, because I don't feel confident in feeding homemade just yet (need to finish my research still) and you can't buy good quality food in this town, it's just not available We were buying food from PG for a while but we don't go there often enough and were constantly running out, and switching between crap food and good food wasn't fairing well on the boys stomachs.


ETA - the title of the book is "Dogs Behaving Badly"