Dogs That Suckle Toys

[bedazzledx2]

Really interesting! My BC suckles his teddy bear and is very particular about it. He always suckles the head between the ears. What is interesting is that his mother, father and half brother are all confirmed sucklers but he had no contact with his father or half brother.

A study recently published in Molecular Psychiatry ( A canine chromosome 7 locus confers compulsive disorder susceptibility) looked at obsesive compulsive disorders in Doberman Pincher's including blanket and flank sucking. The found a particular allele increased the risk of them having OCD and were looking at it as a possible model for human OCD spectrum disorders.

It also said that a stressful event may have started it but stressors are usually not required to initiate the behaviour once it has become habit. That may be where the early weaning idea comes from.