Hi,
I was wondering if any of you guys could give me some advice. I've a 6 month old Lab who just loves to chew on stones. I do try my best to take them away from him but am a bit worried that the odd one may get through. I've tried just telling him to leave them, (& treating when he does) or telling him off but nothing seems to put him off. Please help or should I not worry too much?

I would worry - I have a friend whose Springer does this - she's had two ops, and now wears a muzzle when in the garden unattended :(

I've always found, especially with labradors, that teaching them to retrieve and bring you anything that they pick up is better than telling them not to do it or trying to take things away from them.  You will find that the more you 'steal' them from him and the more you tell him to leave, the more valuable they will become to him.  Telling him off will only warn him not to do it when you are looking or worse still to run away or swallow them when you appear.  Other than that you will have to keep him away from the stones altogether or occupy him with something more interesting all of the time that he is in the garden (assuming that is where the stones are).

Hi,
Thanks for the replies. Yes the stones are in the garden. I have been doing the retreval thing, but he does seem to think it fun to run around like a lunitic. I've been through the garden time and time again to try and remove them but the little angel just keeps on digging up more. I will persist with the retreiving and see how we go. He's got loads of toys to play with as well as my two children who play with him endlessly, so hopefully he's not doing it out of boredom.

What else does your lab puppy have available to chew. At six months old there is a lot of teething going on and plenty of things to chew such as bones and chew toys, carrots, should be made available for the puppy to chew on. I would not leave the puppy unattended in an area where it has access to stones. When the puppy does find a stone, take it away and replace with a suitable object that it can chew. Once the puppy starts to chew on this object give it lots of praise. Play lots of retrieve games with the puppy using suitable toys (avoid toys with a squeak mechanism as my puppies usually find a way to get to this). It can be dangerous if they like small stones, one of mine likes really big stones, so it is not such a worry.

Hope this helps 

unfortunately some dogs seem to do this stone eating thing, and commonly it is labs, retrievers or spaniels. My friends retriever did this repeatedly despite all training, and thus far has had 3 ops. Now has to be muzzles when outside unfortunately. :(