Dustbin dogs!

pippixox

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We’ve had our lab for at least 6 months now (3 year old rehome) but I still can’t believe how much of a dustbin he is!!!!
I know labradors are renouned and he was underfed when we got him (approx 5 kg underweight, had not left house in months so no muscle and must simply not have had enough food, he has since gained about 3kg in muscle! And looks lean side but good.) he has not been under fed all his life though, only the last 6 months when he was not cared for by an ex of the man that contacted us to have him.
Anyway..... seriously is there anything I can do to discourage him from eating anything?! at the farm my horses are at a lot of people seem to litter (despite a container and skip) and dump stuff on a burn pile. Today he found a dip pot- but I then had to wrestle it out of his mouth and tempt with a treat as he was starting to eat the plastic. He then tried to eat empty silver foil. My collie will eat scraps, but only if it’s actually food!

Blooming dog!
I don’t want to resort to a muzzle. Hoping it will not be as bad for litter once the fourtnightly shoot stops as they are the worst on the weekend.

Anyone else have a dustbin for a dog?
He has also taken to clementines over Christmas which I’m hoping are not too bad for dogs (toddler gets bored half way through one and feeds it to him)
 

Pearlsasinger

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TBH, that's Labradors for you! The best way to deal with it is to teach 'Leave', rather than expect the dog to just ignore stuff - he won't. We used to have a Rottweiler who adored clementines, we saved them for ultra special rewards for her.
 

Clodagh

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We have three labs, one eats anything a tall, at any time, one likes food but a normal amount and one will not eat if anything better is in the offering. I agree with PAS, teach him 'leave', at least ours tend to bring us things and given them to us, always handy.
The greedy one has eaten many indigestible things in her life but with hindsight worst ever (apart from rotten salmon head and entire pot of Effax hoof oil) was swallowing a pair of lungs from a fallow deer. I caught the oesophagus as she started to choke and had to pull them out. Sink plunger noises!
 

Shady

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I feel your pain P and can offer no advice except to do as Pearl says. My last Weim and this one will sample and eat just about everything they can pick up and try. So far the only thing this one doesn't like is tomatoes. I found this out by visiting a friend who has a compost heap. You could just about see him half buried in it stuffing his face. The farts later had us wishing for oxygen masks ..If I see him I can head him off with a command and he'll drop an item if asked but left to his own devices he is an utter pig . On my land I have chestnuts, walnuts, apples, plum, cherry and fig trees and he eats them all. He's probably responsible for ozone damage... he's truly disgusting:)
 

pippixox

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Yes need to work on leave it a lot!
He runs off when he knows I want to take it off him!

I guess I haven’t really taught it as he rarely has anything in his mouth for me to tell him to drop (doesn’t play fetch except on occasions when he steals collies ball to get her to play!) and we focussed on recall when we got him.

I did use a treat to tempt him, but not as exciting at dip or foil!
He is quite good at finding old carcasses around the farm. Think he had deer ribs once. But they went down just fine!
 
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