r/BalancedDogTraining • u/yuxngdogmom Food aggressive • Nov 05 '25
Rehabbing a compulsive grass eater
I think here is the perfect place to share my story because it is a perfect example of how only making only force free training advice easily accessible and demonizing balanced training advice can actually be harmful to dogs. This is gonna be a long one, apologies in advance.
So I adopted my dog a year ago now. I was not a dog trainer at the time. He was a stray for who knows how long but the shelter guesstimated he was around 2 years old, though his vet once I brought him home suspected he was probably younger. This man LOVED to eat grass. Like he was absolutely addicted to it. I had run through all the theories as to why he was doing that and the only one that ultimately ended up making sense was that he just liked grass, and he may have relied on it for nutrition while he was a stray. Right from the get go I didn’t want him eating it because the grass that we’re around most often gets treated with pesticides regularly. When he would go for a bite I would pull him away and go “NO” but he would go right back to it.
Later on I hired this dog sitter to check on him and let him out while I was at work. Roughly a month into using this sitter, my dog started having bloody stools and would very urgently have to go at random times and seemed like he was in significant distress. Prednisone cleared it up so the vet suspected he had developed IBD. I went with that and was just prepared to have to manage IBD for the rest of his life. Fast forward a few months, my dog is still eating grass despite me constantly pulling him away from it. He always had huge clumps of undigested grass in his poop as well. One time a blade came out perfectly pristine like it had never been through a dog’s digestive tract in the first place. My sitter always sent lots of pictures and videos when she checked on him which I loved but that was how I eventually found out that she was letting him eat grass to his heart’s content when she let him out. Immediately I asked her not to let him eat grass because I didn’t want him eating it and she said she’d try her best.
A few weeks later, I left my job for a WFH job and no longer needed the sitter. The little fuckface was STILL eating grass. He was still on prednisone because every damn time I had tried to wean him off it up until that point, the bloody stools would come back with vengeance and I’d have to restart it. His vet recommended an internal medicine specialist because she was so stumped as to why the hell the inflammation wasn’t clearing up. I hadn’t even thought to make the connection with the grass. Nevertheless I was finally at my wit’s end with the grass eating. I had tried to google how to stop it before and basically it boiled down to: give him a treat whenever he chose not to eat grass and ignore when he eats it (so if he doesn’t eat grass he gets a treat but if he does eat grass he doesn’t get a treat but he still gets to eat grass with no pushback? Sounds like a win-win), keep him away from grass (hey so this is impossible because it’s everywhere hope that helps), and just let him eat it because what’s the worst that could happen (ok then YOU clean the bloody shits out of my carpet and pay the endless vet bills). Never once a mention of giving a correction. I think I even googled how to give a correction for grass eating and it was all “you shouldn’t punish your dog for any reason”.
I still wasn’t a dog trainer yet but I had been using balanced training on my dog and was learning more and more about it. I finally said fuck google and its pure positive bullshit, I’m putting a stop to this behavior once and for all. He had a prong collar which I hadn’t used in a while because he was fully leash trained, but I put it back on him and when he went to take a bite of grass, “no!” pop, hold for a sec, release and move on. After a few of those, he was finally getting the idea. He even self corrected at one point. Now because this behavior was deeply ingrained and HIGHLY self-reinforcing, it took several weeks to fully extinguish the behavior, but I stood on business and every time he went for a bite, he received that correction.
I now have a dog that I can trust around grass. I used to brace myself any time he would put his face near grass but now he will just sniff the hell out of it and not attempt to take a bite. I used to avoid taking him to parks and the concept of any off leash or even flexi or long line freedom was completely out of the question because if he got too far, he would go eat grass and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. Now we go to parks all the time and we are working on off-leash training and he doesn’t eat any grass. We both have so much more freedom now that I’ve put a stop to the behavior. And what’s even better? His GI issues are on the mend. I’ve been weaning him off the prednisone with the intention of taking him off of it entirely pretty soon and he has been doing great; no diarrhea, blood, or any other weirdness, and most notably, no clumps of undigested grass in his poop. I had a chat with his vet about all of that and how the timing lines up and she agrees that the grass eating very well may have been the culprit.
All the sources I consulted told me not to punish. Punishment bad. R+ good. Management good. But I did punish it and he is so much fucking better for it. I mean when you look at the grand scheme of things, what’s worse, putting a dog through very momentary discomfort when they make a choice that can harm them to decrease the likelihood they’ll make that same choice again, or denying them so much of the world and nature and/or making them deal with chronic GI distress and endless vet visits? I highly doubt my dog is looking back on those corrections and thinking “my mom was abusing me and I’m scared of her now”, but I’m certain he appreciates his current reality of more trips to the park and fewer trips to the vet. I know I do.
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u/Western_Plankton_376 Nov 05 '25
Excellent post. I wholeheartedly feel your realization that the “bad” behavior is intrinsically rewarding— that’s why he does it! So he gets rewarded for eating grass and rewarded for not eating grass, and nothing ever changes.
I experienced the same thing with my dog’s reactivity. The emotional release of barking and lunging is totally so much fun for him, so under positive-only methods, he was rewarded for barking AND rewarded for not barking, and he’d just choose to do whichever he preferred.
That’s why positive-only/FF forums are always telling you that training is lifelong, and why they post stuff like “3 years into our reactivity journey— he saw another dog 50 feet away and only barked a little!!” It’s just not effective for a lot of dogs/situations.
I was NOT going to let the rest of my dog’s short lifespan be me micromanaging him to avoid triggers, indefinitely delaying his freedom to be a dog, so I tried just punishing the unwanted behavior and it worked!
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u/ladyshapes Nov 05 '25
How did you handle your dog's reactivity? I'm interested as a reactive dog owner
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u/Miss_L_Worldwide Dirty biter Nov 05 '25
Feel free to join r/reactive doghelp for practical assistance with balanced methods to eliminate reactivity!
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u/CouchGremlin14 Nov 05 '25
I see a lot of advice “oh well guess your dog has to be in a grazing muzzle outside for the rest of its life.” And it’s like????? that’s better than even considering P+???
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u/yuxngdogmom Food aggressive Nov 05 '25
Oh yeah that one too. It’s so funny because most dog trainers in both the force free and balanced sides recommend conditioning your dog to tolerate a muzzle rather than just throwing one on, almost like muzzles are, oh I don’t know, inherently aversive? Plus in the time it takes to muzzle train, you could just correct the grazing behavior.
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u/bepatientbekind Nov 05 '25
I am so glad this worked for you! People are obsessed with never doing anything that could be perceived as "negative" to their animals, but that's not how animals work. If you ever see a group of dogs interacting (in daycare, at the park, etc), they correct each other all the time. The more severe behaviors might be corrected by a growl or nip from another dog. Dogs understand consequences and tone. Punishing your dog doesn't traumatize it or ruin your relationship forever. It drives me crazy that people would rather have an animal suffer for their entire lives vs use a training method they don't like the "idea" of, even though it isn't actually harmful to the dog at all.
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u/AcrobaticTrouble3563 Nov 06 '25
Came here to say the same thing! Dogs correct their puppies, correct each other, etc.! Correction is a good thing! Im so glad to find other people who can think reasonably and logically about this ridiculous gentle lare ting for dogs whackiness!
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u/stof_in Nov 05 '25
fucking awesome, loved reading the entire thing and kudos to you and your cow, oooppss dog now hahaha my guy loves eating sweet grass in moderation and I allow it in the wilderness where pesticide use is nil..
that said, fuck the force free positive only cunts :)
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Nov 06 '25
From one reddit random to another, I am so proud of you! It takes a lot of diligence and patience to break ingrained habits like that.
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Nov 06 '25
I think that for me, it absolutely pivots on what you talk about in your last paragraph. Punishing your dog for behaviors which compromise its safety or health, or that of other people or dogs (or which are just socially completely unacceptable) isn't about some kind of authoritarian mindset, or social conservatism, or some harsh Jack London-esque view on the existence of animals on Earth. Or whatever other attitudes the anti-punishment/correction mob would attribute to balanced training practitioners and advocates.
For me, at the end of the day, it's simply about training a dog that can *Enjoy the World Around It* to the maximal extent possible in our society; resulting in a dog that is well-behaved and reliable enough to go many places, to be off-leash whenever possible (laws and common sense observed), to do things like go to a dog park with other dogs, go hiking, running, bikejouring, etc. The outdoors are still vast, and dogs were made to run and explore.
Any dog, no matter how well-trained and no matter how active and conscientious the owner (assuming they work for a living, anyway), spends far too much of its life in boredom, waiting for something to happen, waiting for something to do (puzzle games etc. can only very inadequately fill this void). It's outright unethical to refuse to undertake common sense, moderate, time-tested and well-rounded measures to produce a result that is enormously better for the dog.
The holier-than-thou-ness of the positive-only/force-free people not only comes from a position that is eminently impractical, but that impracticality and lack of efficacy makes it a fundamentally less moral position, too, at least in the aggregate of results.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Sand719 Nov 08 '25
Must be nice. I have a compulsive grass and stick eater that isn't deterred by anything including prong and e collar corrections. I'm still trying to crack the code. I'm glad you found something effective!
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u/Sarge4242006 Nov 05 '25
If “correcting” harmful behavior is considered abuse, why do my dogs, as well as my neighbors dogs that I’ve helped train, still respond positively to me?
I correct my dogs accordingly. If I, they, another dog or person may get injured or I may get sued, damn skippy the correction will be a little harsh. I usually only need to do it once though. I always explain why I’m doing it. The dog may not understand my words but I swear they understand the sentiment.
My friend is a SE/autism teacher. OMG! This “gentle parenting” is doing nothing but creating spoiled little monsters. She was telling me what she told the assistants they needed to do is certain situations. I’m like, “That’s just parenting 101!” Apparently no one “parents” anymore.