Once you’ve decided you are dealing with pica (remember that the item has to be ingested versus just chewed), then it’s time to look at your alternatives.įIND THE CAUSE IF YOU CAN: Since some pica seems to be caused by medical problems or a nutritional deficit, I’d start there. We do know that pica in humans is more common in children with developmental disabilities, but that doesn’t help us much with dogs. Dogs clearly think this food is manna to the gods.) We simply often have no idea why dogs become crazed about ingesting pencils, or rocks, or My Pony dolls. I’m tempted to add in “sibling rivalry, or being forced to wear pink collars if you’re a male dog”, but the fact is that there seem to be a multitude of reasons why a dog might become obsessed with eating weird stuff. Pica can even be a symptom of normal exploratory behavior.” Here’s what Best Friends, for example, has to say about it: “The causes of pica can be hard to determine, but can include gastrointestinal disease, anemia, liver disease, pancreatic disease, diseases causing excess appetite (such as diabetes), neurologic diseases, poor diet, being on medications such as prednisone, behavioral disorders such as anxiety, or a depraved home environment.
#Pica dogs sand full
Thus you can see that diagnosing pica is a bit squishy, but if a dog has a belly full of plastic because she will move heaven and earth to ingest it, it clearly needs to be addressed.Ĭauses of Pica? All the answers I’ve seen are some version of “throw every possibility against the wall and see if it will stick”. Perhaps it is so common that no one wants to categorize as “abnormal”? (But see below for a discussion of why we might include grass eating as an example of pica.) The definition of pica might be a bit fuzzy, but it usually refers both to the item (is it dangerous for the dog or beyond anyone’s definition of food?) and/or to whether the individual behaves as if it were a compulsion, and seeks non-food items out c0mpulsively.
On the other hand, I couldn’t find any references that included grass eating as pica, although clearly it’s not food, at least to a dog. However, eating feces (coprophagia) is not considered by most to be an example of pica, no doubt in acknowledgement that most dogs love the stuff, sometimes including their own, and that is often might have some food value in it.
Dogs have also been known to eat marbles, pencils, linoleum, jewelry and, of course, underwear. (Also true for cats– see wool sucking.) Rocks are one example, as is metal, plastic, and cloth. But there are a lot of substances that dogs can become fixated on that can cause them harm. Animals whose name in Navajo is “eater of horse poop” can hardly be diagnosed with a serious behavioral or medical problem if they inherently define much of the world as food, including sunflower seed shells, cat poop and vomit. This isn’t too difficult to diagnose in people, but gets a bit trickier in dogs. Pica refers to the ingestion of non-food items, often with an assumed compulsive component to it. The vet had already done three surgeries to remove them, and said there was too much scar tissue to attempt another. I saw one dog who lived by a rocky outcropping, and ate rocks compulsively.
It’s not often that a photograph motivates a topic for the blog, but when friend and colleague Melissa McCue-McGrath sent me this image of her dog Captain, along with a suggestion to write a post on pica, how could I resist? In spite of the amusing photo (no, Captain didn’t really drink any booze), pica can be a serious problem.
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