Beagle issues..help please!!
 

I have a three year old 13' Beagle. She is a real sweetie but she EATS
EVERYTHING!!! I don't mean she has a chewing problem...I mean she eats things.
She ate our TV remote once, she eats cardboard, she eats the other dogs poop
often. This time she ate a plastic clothes hamper. Chews it up into small pieces and
swallows them. I am very worried about this. She vomited up a bunch of pieces of
the hamper but is now very very lethargic and not eating supper. (if you have a
beagle...you know they NEVER skip a meal!) Another 20 mins or so and if she doesn't
start looking better we will be calling an after hours vet clinic. Any input on how to
stop this behavior? PLEASE and THANKS
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The only way to get it under control is with a kennel. If the dog isn't with you, it goes into the kennel. Of course this means that you have to spend quality time with her when you are home and also arrange for a good size outdoor kennel for when you are away longer, where the dog may need to go potty. After getting the dog kennel trained, this will be the most normal thing in the world for your dog.

I used to have a beagle we rescued and hosted until we could find her a new home. She also ate everything. We had her in a kennel and it wasn't a problem. This was a great experience - now I know what dog NOT to get. ;)

HTH

G (who has 2 kennel trained dogs)

Don't mess around, a quick x ray should show anything she ate if it wasn't food......
Could it wait til morning? I'm not a vet, so I can't say.....trust you're gut......
In the worse case scenario it'd be better to act immediately....

Holy crap, a 13-foot beagle!

Hope she feels better.

Hahahahahaha. That was my first thought as well.

I can understand your intense concern - big time problem.
Sounds like anxiety, cubed.
Keep us current.

LMFAO!!! I needed a good laugh!!!! I meant 13" Beagle!!! The old Japanese movie makers would have a heyday with a 13 foot garbage truck like this hound!!!

She has vomited and had a couple loose BM's now seems way better.

My blue healer mix is so very different from this little girl.

I think the Kennel might solve OUR problems with her destruction but is it really solving the dogs issues?

A beagle that my dawg and I team up with for our morning walks was a real porker. The owner, Ben, got him onto better low fat, low this and that, but slightly expensive vet quality dog food. The pounds fell off him. Ben said it is a lot cheaper than vet bills to keep him at a healthy weight and he is NOT hungry scroungering everything in the park. I think your beagle is just hungry and needs filling up so he doesn't sniff out and eat everything.
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You think of it as "prison". It really isn't. You should look up kennel training on the web and read a little more about it. Dogs adjust well to being confined in a kennel for limited time every day. It also helps their attention to you when they are out. The problem may still get a little better with age, but at 3 she should have outgrown the puppy stuff.

I do like Bill's suggestion on buying some low calorie air food and see if you can fill her up a little better. That said, beagles are black holes when it comes to food, so YMMV!

G

I had to LOL on this one. GREAT! Thanks for sharing.

G

My friend had a beagle that are everything too. One time, she ate gravel. Like big pieces of landscaping gravel. She had to have surgery to get it out. Expensive dog after the several times she had to bring the dog to a vet for the same issue.

Good luck to you but it kind of sounds like a common theme with beagles.

Tweezers. Hate to be a know all smarty pants... But please tell your friend Beagle is lacking minerals.

That used to be the "old wive's tale" regarding dogs who liked to "munch on a turd"...ain't true. They can be "smart as can be", but they are still dumbazz dawgs when you get down to it :D. G is correct about crates, etc. I use them only for the first six months or so, but the dogs don't see them as a prison at all...it's their "den" and would seem to be the ticket for an insatiable beagle...poor dawgy...hope all is well now.

The first dog the wife and I got after we were married was a beagle. He was dumb as dirt and ate everything. Came home one day after work he had eaten 1/4 of the couch fabric including metal zipper ! He pooped that out and I gave him quite the scolding. Later that week he decided to eat some of the matching chair......... I wanted to kill him !!! We kept the dog and eventually he got over eating everything but he never got over being as dumb as dirt. Last beagle we have ever owned.

We used to have beagles, at one point we had three of them... which is technically an infestation.

One of them was like yours... would literally eat & digest socks, books, whatever. But food... wow, that dog loved food. I was bringing groceries in one day and accidentally left some within reach between trips back & forth to the car. In 30 seconds, she ate a WHOLE LOAF OF BREAD, bag and all. Seriously, I couldn't eat a loaf of bread in an hour, but that 35lb dog did in 30 secs

Mike:

What G says is the best advice I can offer as well. My girls are crate-trained and as a result they have their own little spaces they can retreat to when they desire. They sleep in their crates all the time. I never shut the crate doors except on rare occasions such as when the floor is mopped or when I really need to keep them restrained. This was more often when they were puppies than now. The crates are not prisons but rather "dog houses" which serve a purpose for both dog and man.

When Winkipop was young she went through a period where everything in sight was subject to being chewed. During that period I tried to keep everything chewable put out of reach and made sure she had a few toys available at all times. I also used her crate when necessary.

You can find crate-training info all over the net as well as in books.

Also there are many breed-specific talk forums nowadays that might be worth subscribing to. Facebook probably has one too.

Good luck!
Baz and the girls ;)

They're den animals. A kennel may take a week or two to settle with her, but it will be come her "home" once she's used to it.

Thanks Guys and Girls,

She seems to have gotten thru this episode OK. (there have been vet bills in the past, for eating a large rib bone whole, stolen of the patio table, a tree branch once as well!!!)

Yes, very cute, very loving but VERY stupid!! And very difficult to train...she doesn't seem to understand praise or scolding. (I prefer to train with praise, but at some point you end up yelling when your possessions keep getting destroyed)

I will change her food this weekend, any ideas what to look for?

Also, I will try more kennel time. Perhaps the kennel idea hurts me more than it hurts her :rolleyes: .

Thanks for your concern and your ideas folks.

Exactly, I'm not a vet, but I am married to a vet tech. And we have had a beagle.

Crate training is your best solution. I had a husky who was a great dog, but couldn't be trusted around food or an escape to the outside.

One thanksgiving, there were eight of us and we had a real feast. I always made sure the dog ate when we ate so he felt like he was eating with his pack. We were too full for desert, but my wife made a beautiful over stuffed apple pie. The thing had to be twice the size of a normal pie. We took a break before dessert and sat in the family room digesting, leaving the pie in the middle of the dining room table.

You guessed it. Old Ringo jumped onto the table and helped himself! He came into the family room and plopped on the floor on his side, so fat that his upside legs couldn't touch the floor. I looked at him, then remembered the pie. I went into the dining room and there was the pie tin with 80% of the pie missing. The funny part was he got full and couldn't finish! I yelled his name and he bolted into his crate. You see his crate is his den, his safe place.