Hi everyone, As I'm sure most of you are now aware, we had a big scare with Yalom this weekend. Thankfully he has bounced back and is better, but the vet is suggesting he had a case of neurotoxicity from eating a still unknown toxin. Obviously we are desperate for this not to happen again. However, he is a typical labrador puppy and he wants to put everything in his mouth. We have a fenced in garden that we have been letting him run around in, but the worry is he's picked something up in there (although I watch him like a hawk). At the moment we're putting him on the lead in the garden to try and get better control of it, but he's a puppy and needs off lead time to run around. My husband is suggesting we muzzle him in the garden so he can still run around, but I'm not sure about this. We're working on drop it and he will swap items for treats, the worry is he ingests something before dropping it. I'd really appreciate your advice and thoughts. Thankyou.
Hey there, we had this very same worry with buddy, he had an upset tummy and we thought it might be slugs, fortunately these only come out at night, so the last night time we he’s on the lead, the rest of the time here’s what we did..... As you have done we fenced off an area, this was mostly down to helping with toilet training so that there were less distractions, it worked a treat. In that area we power washed it and use a garden blower to get rid of as much debris as we possibly can each day. We taught a very good drop by sternly saying ‘drop’ and passing him a treat every time we say it, he now instantly drops a stone every time we say it, though still keeps the odd bit of higher value stuff like twigs lol, but this works pretty well! There’s a video from a trainer on my ‘stones’ thread teaching a similar way to this method. When he gets a bit bored we do some high value treat training, or give him his antler with treats squeezed into the ends, or a plastic bottle, frozen tea towel, keep mixing it up and this keeps him occupied. It’s such a worry and so hard as this is just what they do, but hopefully there’s a few ideas there to minimise the chances, good luck!
I would try not to "over learn" from this experience. Whilst many (if not all!) labrador pups do pick stuff up, few of them actually swallow it. That's not to say you don't need a reliable 'Drop' cue and supervision isn't essential - all that is great. But muzzling him at this point, is really unnecessary. As are any other extreme measures - you've all had a shock, but do understand it is an incredibly uncommon thing to happen and he will grow out of putting stuff in his mouth as he gets older. For now, supervise him extremely closely. Ensure he trails a puppy house line at all times - Clix make a 2.5m one you can get from Amazon - and train a Drop: As for what he ate, there are a lot of mushrooms around at this time of year and neurotoxic symptoms can be caused by ingesting mushrooms. You might want to have a walk around your lawn/grass areas and pull up any mushrooms you can find. They are often quite appealing to puppies...
Mushrooms! I think that's what it was. I know there are some at this time of year near the river where we went for a short walk. I didn't even think of that though. Fits his symptoms perfectly. Thanks so much for your suggestions both. I think I'll concentrate on working on his drop and just keep a good eye on him. You're right that it's a shock, but also that it's important not to overreact.
