I have an eight week old puppy. She is lovely butttttttttt. Is it normal for them to bolt their food and later vomit it up. Is there anything I can do to calm her eating habits. I am feeding her only small amounts are two hourly intervals but I am not sure how much she is keeping down. Also she is like a hoover walking along the ground she tries to eat anything including stones I am constantly following her around for fear she will eat something that will harm her.

You could always try hand feeding her , slowly , as a temporary measure :)

i have a 13 week old puppy - she isn't a sicky one, but sometimes she does eat really fast & get hiccups!

what i thought might be useful to say is that we joke in the family and call her 'MiniHoover' as she snuffles around hoovering up ANY scraps on the floor.....its just her being a dog.

ruby also loves chewing stones and chewing & munching a zillion things she can find in the garden. the tactic i've decided to take is that i always work out what she's got - but i only take it off her if its definitely dangerous ie really small stones (mine's only a weeny dog, so maybe this makes it easier?) I don't like her chewing big stones but if i take EVERYTHING off her that she finds, she refuses to come near me.

If i do have to get something off her (eg her favourite, snail shells - sometimes still full of snail bleugh bleugh bleugh :() i approach her slowly, give her a stroke, say a command 'swaps!' and let her sniff a really tasty treat - but don't let her have the treat until she's dropped the mingy-thing she's chewing.

i guess what i wanted to say is that one of the main thing's i learnt in my 5 weeks as a pup owner is that you just have to be relaxed about the things they put in their mouths - yesterday she came on a new walk with me, first time she's been near livestock. every time i turned round to look at her she was proudly carrying a big steaming sheep's poo which i promptly had to remove with a stick i kept with me for that purpose! Nice Ruby, very nice. But she'll get bored of it as she gets used to it - its just their way of exploring the world.

I guess should caveat that with the fact that you should make sure that it IS her bolting the food that's causing her to vom, not something she's persistently hoovering up - when you go to the vet's for her first jab ask their advice - and if you're worried before then then just go, its worth checking she's ok and not got a bad case of wroms or something else that's making her sick.

enjoy her! hope you get it all sorted :)

One trick I was told for my springer puppy was to put a tennis ball, or something similar into the bowl so they have to work around it. My springer was from a large litter, plus she had been weaned with other working dogs around her so she had learned she had to eat really fast or she would miss out. The ball helped but having said that 3 years on she still hoovers her food without taking a breath.

Has she got any vaccinations coming up? It might be worth mentioning it to the vet, as i would be a bit worried that she is not getting enough nutrients from her food to enable her to grow properly. How often does it occur? Have you changed food recently?

My dog had a habit of picking stones up off my driveway, and then one day i noticed she never actually ate them just played with them in her mouth. Then a few weeks after her adult teeth came through she stopped. So i imagine she was teething like babies do and instantly putting something in her mouth to bite on.