My terrier Sam used to be a demon for grabbing anything he found on the street - as if he ever missed a meal at home. He also hated it when I brought bread to the park to feed the ducks. He wouldn't take bread from me at home, but, boy, those ducks weren't going get it if he had anything to say about it.

and that he's pretending to be someone named Sam?

You just totally described what Yoshi does with "street food" and wanting to eat everything that's meant for someone else even if he hates it.

Does your Sam also want to scrape old pre-chewed gum flattened into the pavement and eat it?

"Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest?"
"Because it's there."
~ Edmund Hillary

"Why is it that you want to eat everything you find outside even if you know you don't like it?"
"Because it's there."
~ Yoshi and Sam

Our beagle is just crazy about food, walks for him are a treasure hunt. We have a lot of walkers in my neighborhood (orthodox Jews) and the kids are always dropping food. Recently he must have smelled something in some gravel and ended up breaking a tooth when he tried to eat it. Had to have the tooth pulled. He does seem to be more careful with gravel now though. Just this week he has eaten a couple paper towels, cat poop (we have learned where they like to poop so we keep him away from loose dirt) a cupcake wrapper and a piece of a cracker or something. Oh and he gets a little cat food sometimes, there is a guy in my area who lost a cat years ago and now puts out little piles of kibble at certain points on the sidewalk.

Me and my wife give each other reports about where we see bigger food, it's hard to believe but people will toss out a half eaten burger or a piece of chicken out their car window, last week I ran across a whole baked potato.

I used to get pretty upset but all I can do is just keep my eye on him the best I can.

an ENTIRE, still wrapped McDonald's hamburger in the street. He still will sniff around that exact spot when we walk that way. I hate to tell him, but that was a once in a lifetime find.

Only what he found that he wanted to eat so badly was a smashed flat dead critter.

He also does the same thing to one of my neighbor's ivy they have on their lawn because the second day I had him he went to pee in it and scared the crap out of mouse that was hiding in there. Every single walk when we go that way he has to check the ivy for the mouse. That was almost 3 years ago, too.

My first Akita, Kato, always insisted on carefully going over the entire parking lot of the supermarket scanning for yummy bits. He almost always got lucky there, too. Once he found and entire birthday cake someone had bought and accidentally dropped in the parking lot (and left it lying there!). He gulped down two huge bites before I could haul him away from it. Then a little while after we got back home he barfed it up and tried to eat it again! Though it was no fun cleaning cake and frosting barf off the carpet I'd rather have done that than if he didn't get sick from it and fouled his digestion for a week and put him off his dog food.

All three of mine are/were picky as hell about their dog food but will happily chow down on anything they find in the world outside my house and yard even if it's nothing that can be described as food.

The vet said he'd bet it was what they called "dustbin gastritis". Obviously a very common problem.
Frustrating when we buy them, or even make for them, the finest, healthiest dog food, and they turn their picky noses up at it.

You'd think when they got sick from something gross they ate off the ground they'd learn to not do it. No such luck. LOL!

I often wonder if it's more the excitement of finding a "prize" like the toy in a box of cereal, and they eat it just to keep you from taking it away. Dogs will eat their own poop if they have an emergency accident in the house as a way to hide it because they know they aren't supposed to go in the house. They'll also try to hide it by piling stuff on it like your slippers, a magazine, etc. or even their own toys.

When we're out on our walks Yoshi will hide something in his mouth pretending he hasn't got anything in there (which usually does fake me out, the sneaky bugger) but will wag his tail and make an about-face for home at warp speed though when we get there he just drops it in the yard and forgets about it sort of like he just wants to claim and secure his latest prize. I used to be able to just take things out of his mouth, but lately he's learned that he can keep me from doing that if he crams his head under a parked care or a bush and will not come out until I relent and let him take his latest prize home. As long as he can bring his treasures home and just drop them in the yard instead of bolting crap down his gullet to secure it, I'd rather he did that though it's kind of a pain if he finds something when we've only gone a few blocks, so when he drops his prize off at home he wants to go back out again because it was a brief walk (and to hunt down more treasures to bring home).

The weird things that doggies do... we should right a book.

I think you may be right about "the prize". Our new girl, Molly, loves her prizes, but instead of food, they are things she picks up on her walks at the beach, a rock or a stick, usually. She finds something and runs back to the car, circling the car until I give up and walk back, open the car, and put the prize in. She'll go back to the beach to continue the walk, but her heart is with that prize in the car. We have her rock and her stick in the yard, and she's still delighted with them.

They are hilarious. The joy and laughter they bring, even when they are being "naughty". What would we do without them?

Hugs and kisses to Yoshi.

She was very strong and it was hard to stop her from grabbing what she wanted. Nom nom nom!

They'll eat anything. I had a yellow lab mix that ate a plastic jar of peanut butter. All that was left was the lid. He also ate an unopened can of tuna. All that was left of that was a large, flat piece of metal with teethmarks in it. He must have bitten down on it and kept biting until all the tuna and juice was gone.

My old dog, Boo, used to LOVE fresh stinky mulch. Every spring I had to keep a sharp eye out for any gardens we walked by that had recently been mulched. The stinkier it was the better he liked it.

She has more baths than she should because she's always escaping into the field next to the fence, and finding a fresh pile to roll in. Now is that any way for a young lady to behave, I ask her.....