Her eating stones is not a good thing - at all, of course. Neither of mine have ever eaten stones. They have picked things up - constantly - and from 8 weeks I have encouraged them towards me and then dropped treats (without them seeing) so then they learn that spitting things out near to me is a good thing. If your pup is actually eating a lot of large stones, and not just a trivial amount of small stones, then I'd consult a professional. Particularly if she is swallowing stones when you try to take them.
She is really into eating dirt, sand, little tiny pebbles in my backyard and then in the street bigger rocks that are bigger than pebbles but not large rocks. She also LOVES to eat sticks and bark/mulch, things that fall of trees all the way up to pine cone size. My backyard is pretty 'sterile' compared to most because it is a patio with two areas of artificial turf. The bark/mulched areas are now fenced off and that eliminated the bark eating problem. But there are the tiny little pebbles (way smaller than pea gravel but larger than sand) that she is really insistent on eating. And licking the cracks or dividing lines of my patio which have dirt. Once we go out into the world her mouth is on everything, ripping real grass out of the ground but not really eating it. Chewing up and eating sticks, picking up those bigger stones and trying to eat them and diving for dirt and sand and chowing down on that. She would MUCH rather eat these things than the super high value treats I have like baked chicken or whatever stinky meaty stuff that normally drives her nuts. If I drop the meat she doesn't care and would rather eat the bad stuff. If I try and shove the meat in her mouth to get her to drop what is in there it rarely works. What I have been doing is actually grabbing her and reaching in that little Croc mouth and pulling the stuff out. Then having her focus on me and giving her the chicken. But like you said, me pulling everything out of her mouth could be making it worse???? Should I keep doing it or should I let her figure it out on her own that those items are not that big of a deal? I am not sure about this. My last one simply mowed the grass and spit it out. It was cute and went away on its own. We have been working on 'leave it' but that is only inside and to the point of her leaving food in my open hand. We haven't been able to progress further than that YET. But we are working towards the future 'leave it' that includes everything I want her to leave alone. But she is only 13 weeks and I can't expect that of her yet. She is totally off the Metro today and only on the probiotics. Still doing well. We took her to a park today to work on some recalls back and forth between my husband and I and there was EVERYTHING there that she wanted to eat. It took her a WHILE to finally start focusing on me and taking the chicken. I had her on a long line and was mostly just trying to pull her away from the dirt. Letting her chew the sticks which she would mostly drop and trying not to make such a huge deal about it. About halfway though our outing she really started to care less for all the bad stuff and wanted to focus on me and get her chicken.
