My vet years ago had a cute name for Pica, "Garbagecanitis"

Cracking up at the Labrador comment. My last dog was a lab-terrier who tried to eat everything she could get her paws on. Even when I thought I had everything put up and out of reach, she'd find something. Thankfully, she was never hurt by what she ate. She eventually grew out of it, but that was a stressful few years. That aside, she was adorable but in no way intelligent. 😅

@KASPlaysSims

26 күн бұрын

I have a golden lab and it is true . As a young dog the idiot liked coins or pennies . No clue why . He doesn’t eat them anymore he stopped in his puppy years .

Your comment about labs and doodles made me feel so validated. I have a derpy chocolate labradoodle with maybe 1.5 functional brain cells that loves to eat paper products. He ate my son's homework. I've always worried that there's something actually wrong with him, but no... Just doesn't know any better

@Salviamente_Celes

21 күн бұрын

When i had my first cat, i left the food free for her to eat. She bloated and costed me a bite while the vet inject her the medicine

I’m in the “pick shit up” camp. It’s way easier. My girl likes plastic. I have a lot of clutter, but plastic goes away asap. And I’ve had some nightmarish close calls, because you can’t be perfect, but if there’s one particular thing they jones for, just keep it away.

@ians_mind

29 күн бұрын

Can't not have cables. Solved it by rubbing shitty cheap bar soap on every cable I own. 1 tiny nip later none of the cables got touched again.

My daughter, who is a Registered Vet Tech, had a cat that had a severe case of Pica. He had six abdominal surgeries to remove blockages. My daughter was fastidious about not leaving anything out that her cat could consume. He ate the bedding on their bed, and things like that. She even consulted vets at UC Davis, and an animal behaviorist. The cat actually ate part of his muzzle. One time, the cat had not even gotten his sutures out from his surgery, when he did it again. She would have to place him in a cage when she left her house. The cat had no quality of life. Eventually, when surgery number seven was to happen, she reluctantly had to have him euthanized. She tried so hard to help him, she was devastated. when he died.

I had a cat with pica. I couldn't leave out anything plastic or paper or she would tear it up and eat some of it. I had to put everything away right away. My place was so tidy! The worst was electrical cords. I had to cover or hide them all. Twice, she managed to chew through cords that were plugged in. Luckily she didn't get electrocuted. On the positive side, she was a sweet cuddle bug. I still miss her.

@ferretyluv

28 күн бұрын

My cat has this problem. Any plastic bits of wrapper lying on the floor is fair game. Plastic bags get chewed on all the time.

@MoonbeamGardener

27 күн бұрын

I'm dealing with that but didn't realize it had a name. I've got two cats that will chew cords, but one of them will also chew up shoes. That cat has done more damage than all of the dogs I've ever owned combined. I've been treating it like a compulsion and been trying to keep things put away, but now I'm wondering if there's an anxiety aspect to it. The cat seems to LOVE my daughter (more than anyone else in the house), she picked him out at the shelter, and it is almost exclusively her shoes he goes after, my guess being her scent is on them...

Used to have a cat that was obsessed with chewing on and eating plastic, like twist ties, plastic bags, candy rappers, zip lock bags, etc.... We had to make sure anything like that was kept well away from where he could reach, and limit the amount of plastic items like that from coming into our home.

Thank you for this video. It might have been my comment that you lost track of. My male cat (terribly underweight with GI lymphoma) eats all the ordinary plastic items, including plastic shower curtain liners and those woven polyester bags. We hang the shower curtains over bungee cords and do not allow anything in the house that he can get in his mouth. Then he started eating worlds best litter and vomiting it up. He also ate the walnut-based stuff. We finally landed on Feline Pine, which he only eats occasionally. The basket muzzle is a great idea... for that Lab.

That Labrador comment is so right!! My Lab once ate half a roast chicken, thankfully he only ate food. My current dog is a Frenchie she's normally pretty good at just sniffing stuff dropped on the floor but if she feels she's not getting enough attention she'll pick something up and parade in front of you with it. I just about had a heart attack yesterday when she picked up a hair tie while I was cuddling one of the guinea pigs. I thought at one point she'd swallowed it. I had to swap with her for a small bit of bread.

I JUST had a conversation like this with one of our clients who’s dog couldn’t go on a normal walk because it was constantly picking up and eating whatever it found! They are FINALLY considering a basket muzzle

LMAO the two brain cells thing cracked me up so hard.

My two year old cat seems to have some mild pica. I've had him since he was eight weeks old and he's one of the smartest cats I've ever met, despite being an orange boy. But the little gremlin loves to eat small bits of paper or loose carpet fuzz (he doesn't scratch at the carpet for more fuzz, thank goodness). 😑 Praise all things good that he sticks to tiny things that can either be digested or pass through without a problem as long as we're diligent about getting any loose fuzz we see off the floor. What little he gets first can pass.

Right before one of my dogs was diagnosed with Addison's she had terrible Pica. She would eat anything she could get in her mouth basically. After I finally got her diagnosed and started treatment her Pica issue was pretty much resolved.

Excellent video. Really informative. In humans pica is somewhat mysterious and often comes down to psychological conditions. It's really cool to see the difference between pica in humans and In animals and also know that there are ways to treat it. Thank you for the info!

I have a cat with OCD and pica. I have to remind my mother to put things up or hide them in the microwave. And just because he hasn't chewed on it in the last week doesn't mean he will continue to ignore it. We trained ourselves to spot his obsessions so we can keep him safe. I love him so much.

My great-uncle’s Yorkshire terrier developed PICA but he was like 8 or 9. My GU had died and the dog went to live with his daughter, and he developed severe anxiety, separation anxiety and PICA. The PICA resulted in him eating concrete and rubble and brick. So he could never be left alone in the garden as he was making his was through eating the steps 😮

When my dog was in the hospital, being treated for eating part of a bath towel, she pulled out her IV catheter and ate it.

Interesting facts easy to understand.

My cat was eating the garland at the back of the Christmas tree unbeknownst to me. I went to clean her litter box and there was plenty of digested tinsel in her poo. I nearly had a heart attack! 😱 She was taken to the vet and it was determined she had got all that tinsel out of her. It may seem like a funny situation, but it can be very dangerous. Christmas season can be a dangerous season for cats and dogs. It is probably the busiest time at vet hospitals.

I didn't realize this was a condition, but it may explain some of the issues I'm having with a few of my animals. I've got an elderly German Shepherd that has pain issues, (she's on meds) that will eat dirt and random debris in the yard. Then I have a pair of cats that like chewing cords. One is an older female that's easily stressed, the other is a year old male that was rescued from a shelter. The male, however, goes after cords more aggressively and also my daughter's shoes... He chews them up like you might expect a dog too... His favoritism towards her is very obvious, and I think he's got attachment issues. He's done more damage in less than a year than all of the dogs I've ever owned combined. 😅 I appreciate the video, I didn't know this behavior had a name.

Also fun to know; pica is also normal in humans, though usually small children and during pregnancy. So for humans they usually grow out of it. But that's why you hear about people eating or craving hair, coal, sand etc. (Just take care that your child doesn't eat a lot of things that can hurt their digestive system! Not that easy to muzzle)

Our doofy 8 year old indoor female cat loves to chew on plastic bags. What’s a pet parent to do when there are so many Amazon Prime deliveries 😂

@ember1794

28 күн бұрын

Our tomcat also does it - we really try to keep everything plastic out of his reach, but he still manages to find something sometimes - it can be really dangerous, I'm not sure why he's doing it, but he was a street kitten in Spain found with horrible diarrhea (his sister also had it and died of it 😢), and was found very young, not sure if that has anything to do with it

My cat has Pica. He also has an autoimmune disease causing him to be alergic to things hes constantly exposed to, example: dust from the litterbox. The vet thinks this is what caused his mental disorder. Stress being in and out of the vet's office. Constantly getting steroids... the list goes on. Fabric is sort of his trigger. Strings or "dangling" things all had to be removed. Switched to leather furniture. No fabric toys and no string toys. He can't spend time in the bedroom. Shoes, purses, coats have to be locked away. No floor rugs or mats. No towels on the shower rack, the door is the new hanger. If anyone needs tips, I'd be glad to share.

I have a cat who eats plastic. We pick it up, but so much is made of plastic these days. She will choose plastic over food and if she finds some will stash it. Out of our three cats we currently have she is the hardest to understand behavioral wise. She comes off as dumb, but has moments of pure genius and just like intelligence her happy sad doesn't always make sense. This is coupled with her dislike at random toward one of the other cats and a abnormally large size. In the end we have accepted that she's just weird and we may never understand whats going on with her as she seems physically healthy and very active. She's also managed to survive the plastic she's eaten which is weird. (She ate a plastic shelved shoe rack pretty well in one night and loves Styrofoam.) Sadly especially with her getting into the home next door and her eating literally any plastic she comes across we have accepted that the best we can do is keep her alive and healthy for as long as she lets us.

My bottle baby cat (thrown out of a car at 7 days old) eats towels given half a chance, he’s a basket case, but we’ve taken him on two international moves (third one coming up), he used to steal the neighbours kids socks and once pooped out an arm and a leg from a small teddy bear. We try to ensure no towels are left around and luckily he’s never needed surgery, although it’s been close a few times.

My cat, when she was younger, was obsessed with eating rubber bands. She would pull them off things and seek them out to eat them, even beg for them. Luckily never had any emergency surgeries! Vet said it was likely due to being seperated from mum too soon. I stopped using rubber bands and instead use hairbands, shes now 8 years old, I still don't leave rubber bands laying around but I do occassionally use the thicker ones but not on anything left out that she can get to.

@nivision

29 күн бұрын

this. mine was in love with anything rubbery or silicone like. luckily when she did get something, the compulsion seemed to be chewing on it as meticulously as possible, like she was relishing every last shred of that texture between her teeth that she could and when it was nothing more than rubbery shavings she'd swallow it. it meant nothing was ever big enough to get stuck, but anything like those cause-supporting band bracelets, rubber bands, anything like that was toast if it wasn't secured well. luckily most electric cords were too plasticky a texture or that would have been a disaster for her. unfortunately she figured out that inside the hair bands was a normal rubber band though, so beware letting yours poke around them-- it just became another layer to her pursuit.

One thing that helps is using bitter or sour spray. I have a Golden retriever puppy, and a cat with mild pica Anything they chew gets a dose of bitter spray, and they learn pretty quick what not to chew on

My 4 year old bassett loves to eat stuff he shouldn't. One of our doctors had to do emergency foreign body surgery due to eating my sons socks and 1 of them got stuck in his intestines and wouldn't move along. He now wears a basket muzzle if he is out of his crate and not feeding time. He almost died.

My Mom and I are literally hours from moving from rental house, into my Mom's first purchased home. We ran to grab fast food, leaving adult Rottweiler, and 6 month old English Mastiff puppy in the rental, with remaining boxes. Gone no more than 30 minutes, come back to find mastiff puppy has chewed a dinner plate sized hole, through the drywall of one wall. We couldn't even figure out how she got her teeth to do that on the flat surface of a wall! Didn't get the damage deposit back. This was also the puppy, who at 4 months chewed the emergency brake handle into a sharp spearpoint, after just 10 minutes alone in the car. 😂

@B2WM

26 күн бұрын

I feel your pain. Left my foxhound in the bathroom while we carried the furniture into my house, and now I have a dog-sized hole in my drywall from where she dug and chewed so much in only an hour. Several books, a wire crate, half a set of window blinds, an unopened can of corn, and two years of training the separation anxiety out of her later, and she can almost be trusted in the kitchen while I'm at work. She's capable of opening cabinets (chewed up the child safe locks) and I don't usually let her have access to any other room, but she usually behaves if she thinks there'll be a treat and extra walkies for her in it later. Funny thing is that she's gentler with her toys than most of the other dogs in the family. This is what happens when you take the lab brain and multiply by a thousand: brilliant at getting into the food/hunting mice and moles, still no thoughts only happy butt.

Interesting

My old dog suddenly developed a huge interest in toilet rolls. It didn’t seem to be causing him issues, so we worked around it. He’d try to steal the toilet roll in use, until we started putting the used cardboard roll on the ground when it was done, and he was allowed that one. He’d rush to the door when he heard the toilet flush, and peer past you as you came out, to check if there was a new roll on the ground. He’d also developed a skin condition, which treatment wouldn’t get rid of, in the months before he passed. In hindsight, I wonder if it was a normal mite thing which his stressed body just couldn’t deal with while he was sick. He ended up falling visibly ill one day, and vets said it may have been a cancer? He was a good boy. I wonder if his pica was also a result of him getting sick with what eventually took him.

My little sh$t, Wonton, has chewed up 3 pairs of cheap crocs, swallowed the rubber and finally hacked them up, he has chewed my memory foam kitchen rugs, and chewed the strings off my mini blinds (thankfully was ready to change them)! Those strings are his favorite toy. I think he is part siamese and part puppy the way he carries things around. He was too young to be away from momma when he was found under our car, I think momma was moving her kittens and he followed momma and got lost.

My cat eats dirt out of the potted plants. She doesn’t chew on the plants, just the dirt. She’s 8 yo.

My cat loves to lick plastic grocery bags. I also had a cat that loved to chew on cellophane. She could smell it, and would knock over waste baskets to get at it.

I still don't know if my cat was eating conweb because she had pica or if it was a normal but rare thing for a cat. Cuz she was really obsessed with them. She would search around the house, knew all the best spots, got on uncomfortable positions to grab them with her paws, and when going out, the first thing she would do would be to look out for cobwebs. She couldn't get enough.

Maybe add Beagles with Labradors and Doodles I had a Beagle that was a bottomless pit she would eat almost anything including rocks, dirt and she even ate a little bit of drywall, I just had to have her put down about a month ago shocked she made it to 13 and a half years old RIP Magnolia Blossom.

I had a dog who we found had seizures after we moved to a place where he was not on leash outside anymore. It turns out that eating poop directly correlated to eating poop vs not. Originally thought it was from lead poisoning but had him tested and it was not that.

Our Aussie doesn’t eat grass just tears it out of the ground anytime our puppy gets the ball first. The puppy saw her do this though and now does it whenever she fails to get the ball first. Same thing happens when I clean ears, our doodle shakes her head a lot after ear cleaning and the puppy, whose ears hadn’t been cleaned yet, will proceed to shake her head a ton. It’s funny cause if I clean the puppy’s ears and not the doodle she’ll maybe shake them once then be done with it lol. We got a real case of monkey see monkey do

My dog doesn't really have pica, but he spent a good amount of time on the streets before I got him from the pound and thus has weird ideas of what qualifies as food. I've had him for eight years now and I think he's still confused about why I won't let him eat cat poop.

💚

Okay Doc, I will probably go to our vet about it but if you could give ideas on separation anxiety. We have a 7 yr old Cattle Dog/Boxer Mix. I am his main caretaker and he has a bond with me that his dad could only dream of. I rarely leave him, I work from home and take him with me unless it's physically dangerous for him to go. This last week I was gone 6 hours, he wasn't left in a kennel but with my husband (dad). It was hot (ish) that day too so it worried me when I called to check in that my husband said in the 4 hours I was gone Iverson hadn't come inside, eaten, taken offered treats, drank anything, or left the gate next to where I park. This worries me, I am not often gone long but I had things in my daughter's college town to help her with that couldn't be done other ways. Do you have tips on helping this but not hurting our bond?

One of mine likes plastic (but thicker or harder plastic, not plastic wrap), the other likes the corners of wood furniture or cardboard boxes. I think it may be because they had to be bottle fed for awhile after their Mom developed mastitis. They haven't outgrown it. 😥

Had a dog with cushings disease. At 11yrs old he decided to eat couch fluff(had never done that) Ended up with a blockage.

When I was a new Lab mom, a pizza was delivered and I left the box on the coffee table. I went upstairs for a few minutes and the pizza was completely gone. 😂I was so naive! I thought she couldn’t get to it because it was in the box. Hahahaha wrong!

Could be pica if a pet starts to eat food that they are not used to? My cat watches my meal and me like i'm going to die, and then if i am distracted, proceds to eat the leftovers. One time she ate a pear. I took her to the vet (she startes to vomit a lot), vet said she is old and picky eater... I don't want to believe she is that old because she is an active cat. She lost some weight thoug... I know i know, "take her to the vet" i hear you 👀

Calling out the labs and not the goldens? I got rid of my coffee table because there was nothing we could put on there that wouldmt be taken out by one end or the other

Is eating grass for a cat a form of Pica? Also what about biting but not swallowing paper?

I read that FIV cats often have Pica. Anything I can do there?

I have to remove all plastic bags from my house otherwise my one braincell orange cat will eat plastic. Grocery bags are his favorite. So… save the environment and protect the cat.

Dumb labrodor 😂😂😂