Ingesting pea gravel

[Pattty Oehrlein]

Quincy 5 month GD, went to a dog day care yesterday and there were issues, one of which is she ingested quite a bit of pea gravel that they have in their play yard. She has been pooping it out- and seems ok. She has a vet appointment on Thursday - I was pretty clear on asking them to watch her but I think their staff was lacking yesterday, they also never fed her the lunch or snacks I supplied. Sorry to be graphic but she has pooped out a lot of it, and like I said seems ok , eating and peeing fine, but very tired. Anyone else have their dood eat lots of gravel?

[Pattty Oehrlein]

Quite a bit means at least a solid 1/2 cup in her poop today..No I am not going back to the day care, I think whatever their issues with staff were yesterday they still took in 8 dogs and people trusted them with their family and they seriously dropped the ball on a few levels. The women called and apologized profusely for the mix up, forgetting the lunch and snacks, etc. I tried to be a civil as I could be because she is a close friend of a friend, I knew right away I would never go back.The place came so highly recommended, it was a real disappointment. She called twice to say she as sorry about the shortcomings I didn't know about the gravel at that point. She has her regular appointment with the vet on Thursday so Im not sure if I should call and get it bumped a day ahead or let nature take its course.

[Jennifer,Chloe & Myla]

SO sorry to hear this, that's probably painful to poop that much out!

Chloe eats it when she can but we usually catch her after a couple. Glad the vet gave you the food advice. Good luck!

[Pattty Oehrlein]

ok nervous mom that I am - I called vet she said add rice and pumpkin to the food to move things along faster and if Q seems distressed at all to call her, otherwise it will all pass naturally. If not she would do an xray, but now she says doesn't eem necessary. Oh my, stressful times, makes me glad for days I can stay home with her.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Hope everything passes naturally and you can stop worrying.

I think you made a good decision about not going back to that daycare.

[Willow and J]

Willow ate landscaping pebbles and gravel. We used to joke Willow won't fly away in the storms or tornadoes because of rocks in her belly...  I don't think she ate as much as Quincy did, and she never got sick from eating them either. But we always discourage her from eating them, and she knows it too, which is why she almost stopped eating them now. When Willow got hold of a rock, I let out a short noise ("no", or "uh-uh", or clap to stop the motion) then I immediately stopped playing with her and told her to "drop". I resumed playing as soon as she drops the pebble. If she doesn't drop and swallow the rock, I bring her inside right away and ignore her for 30 seconds - so that she can associate eating rock = no more outside play time. That seemed to have worked. I wonder if you can ask people at the day care to do similar to train Quincy out of it? Eating random things seems to be related to puppy stage and it may decrease as Quincy grows, but I'd still train the dog out of eating any ingestible things. 

[Richard Crowe]

     Holly used to pull up clumbs of grass and eat it, dirt and all.  She would then have diarrhea quite badly.  I used a flexilead to take her to go potty for a while and that got old.  Then I bought a training collar.  Two low powered activations completely cured that behavior and Holly gained the freedom of the yard again.  We loved Holly as a puppy, but looking back on her puppy days, she is sure easier to handle now!

     BTW:  Be careful of the Cocoa Mulch that is sold as a non-poisonous alternative to using snail bait.  It is non-poisonous to humans but, extremely toxic to dogs.  It is the shell of the cocoa bean and contains the same toxic elements for dogs as does chocolate.  We had a quantity blow into our dog run during one exceptionally windy day and one of our Maltese scoffed it up (dogs love chocolate). That meant an emercency vet run because she went into seizure...

 

[F, Calla & Luca]

Good reminder Richard. We have info on cocoa mulch in the Danger Group. Sadly the dogs seem to like eating it.

[Kaytlin and Cooper]

first of all, what was a doggy day care doing having something like that can can (and at some point will) be ingested by a dog! Definately dont go there again.

Hopefully Quincy will be ok - follow the vets reccomendation and keep an eye on him

[Camilla and Darwin]

Yikes, I'm glad that so far everything is okay. What a terrible thing for a daycare to do, and to have!

[Traci -Bexter & Maggie]

No wonder she ate the gravel...she was probably starving from not being fed.  Poor thing!  I'm glad you're not sending her back there.  I'm sure she'll probably be okay, but that is quite a bit & I'd be really upset if it were me.  I'm sorry this happened!

[Pattty Oehrlein]

I think we are almost complete with our new "rock garden" It has been a whirlwind of a couple days. I'm so fortunate to have the good advice from the DK crew. THANKS! ....and yes the day care is aware that pea gravel is dangerous to puppies especially hungry ones. I bought Quincy (aka Roxy) a dog t-shirt that came in the mail today it says BFF- on the back. My husband who is not text savvy asked does that stand for  "best f*** fido"- it made me laugh so hard, it's nice to have a bit of humor to break up all the tension.