Hello

Question
Hello mine name is Courtney, I am living with my grandparents and my grandmas dog has a weird habit. Mitsy is a pug and she is about 4 years old. Mitsy will just randomly start licking the furniture or the carpet or hard wood floor...it is really weird I have never seen or heard of a dog doing this before. My grandma says that Mitsy does this all the time, but I was wondering if something could be contributing to this kind of odd behavior. We have had problems with Mitsy ever since she was born she had a really bad illness that made her blind but she is really healthy now...is there anyway for us to fix her licking habit?

Answer
Sometimes dogs lick things out of stress.  She might have started it when she was young due to the illness, and it became a habit.  Also, sometimes when people pay attention to the dog as they lick, the dog is accidentally reinforced for licking and continues doing it.  One thing you can do is enrich the dog's environment with other activities, such as food puzzles or interactive toys.  She can eat from the puzzles, and has to work a bit to get the food out - good mental exercise.