[Snickerdoodle]

When Tegan was a puppy she was a very fussy eater and often didn't eat her meals. I have always fed her twice a day with just her treats in between. As she grew older and following a couple of different trials with different brands of dog food we are currently on Wellness Simple Food Solutions venison as well as the Wellness venison canned food. I mix 1/2 cup kibble with 1 oz. canned twice a day and her appetite was good until the recent time change. Now she is leaving her breakfast again. Today I gave it to her again at lunch time and she sniffed it and walked off.

Has anyone else had experience with this fussy eating and what did you do about it?

 

[MaxandMe]

Max did that around 5mos ??? anyway i sat down with his bowl one day and acted like i was eating it hahaha and kept pushing him away


the other thing i did was to add sweet potatoe to his food.

IF all else fails sometimes you do have to change foods
we use Canidae all life stages

 

[KGarro]

Uma can be picky sometimes. We usually call it her hunger strike.

I think some of the time its simply that she doesn't like to eat alone. If I put food in her dish and walk away, she's going to walk away. If I put food in her dish and then hang out in the kitchen there's a much better chance of her eating. We've even gon so far as to move her dish into the living room when we are eating in there and she'll almost automatically jump on it. Social butterfly, I tell you.

The most important thing to note that our vet told us is that a dog isn't going to starve. Sometimes they just don't have big appetite. Don't worry unless Tegan seems depressed, extremely sleepy, etc.

 

[KingstonTodd]

Hershey used to do this between 4-6 months old (we eventually switched to RAW) and to get her to eat when we needed her to quickly....sprinkled parmagan cheese, or a glob or two of plain yogurt.

 

[annabelles mom]

Hershey used to do this between 4-6 months old (we eventually switched to RAW) and to get her to eat when we needed her to quickly....sprinkled parmagan cheese, or a glob or two of plain yogurt.

My labs Loved Parm Cheese - had it on their food daily!

 

[Snickerdoodle]

Thanks for all your great suggestions. I will try sprinkling parmesan cheese on it. Last night I hand fed her, my husband didn't think it was a good idea, but at least she ate it. I usually give her the food in the same room as I'm going to be in. I even moved a recliner back into one of the rooms I always used to eat breakfast in to see if she preferred having her breakfast in that room best, but it didn't help.

I've also heard that a dog won't starve itself to death, but it's worrying when they won't eat, plus a waste of food when you mix canned and kibbles because it doesn't really keep too well.

I will let you know how it goes. Thanks again.

 

[doodleheaven]

My vet said they won't starve themselves either. We had a golden that was very finicky with eating and underweight. I started sprinkling cheese in the food. It worked but I had to put more and more cheese in the food as time went by so she would continue to eat it. She ended up gaining too much weight from all the cheese and we had to stop giving it to her completely. Like the vet said, I was killing her with my love. So we stopped the cheese. She didn't eat her food dry for about 2 days (that was hard) and then started eating the dry food again (without cheese). So the vet was right that they wouldn't starve themselves. But you are so right, it is hard to see them like that when they aren't eating. My labradoodle seems a bit picky too but we are so nervous about starting the cheese sprinkle again. It's so hard to know what to do.

 

[Snickerdoodle]

Tegan loves cheese also and I'm sure she would eat if I put a lot of cheese on, but she would be the same in that she would probably prefer the cheese to the kibble.

Tonight I am going to try using kibbles only with no canned food mixed in and I have made up a beef oxo bouillion powder so I will pour a little in with the kibble and see how she does with that. I am a little reluctant to do this on a regular basis due to all the sodium in bouillion.

We try to feed our pets better food than we would eat but they don't seem to appreciate our care.

 

[KingstonTodd]

Hershey is still a little picky. Sometimes she doesnt feel like chicken if she gets it too many meals in a row (it dries up her stool) and she wants some beef or lamb. She'll just snuff her meal and walk away. I pick it up and put it back in the fridge. She usually eats it the next meal, but i listen to her wants and giver her red meat the next day. I know its hard to take a meal away, but it doesnt hurt them, they wouldnt eat as regular as we feed them in nature.

 

[Snickerdoodle]

Tegan still left half her meal tonight after I put the beef bouillion in. I guess I will try to quit worrying about her, I'm sure when she's hungry enough she will eat.

Thanks again for all your comments and suggestions.

 

[MaxandMe]

Julie hang in there as puppies do this from time to time.

OH another thing your puppy may or may not do: stop drinking from their water bowl Max did this and OMG i was calling the vet hahaha he wanted fresh bath water...go figure.
when we got Peanut he started gobbling water out of his bowl again.
Peanut never did this.


Max no longer gets finicky cause he knows Princess peanut is there to eat it and if not Beau will hahhaaaaaaaaaa

 

[gracielou]

I think this comes from the poodle in them, mine seem to be a lot like that from time to time but they will eat when hungry.

 

[Snickerdoodle]

Well we had yet another uneaten breakfast this morning. I am saving it for dinner time to see if she will eat. The only problem is that I mix the kibble with canned. It was the only way to get her to eat 6 months ago, so it will be quite soggy tonight I expect. I have been throwing it out, but what a waste.

I have the book Good Owners, Great Dogs by Brian Kilcommons and Sarah Wilson. Brian says that with a finicky dog that came to stay with them this dog's owners said they had needed to put out 15 pieces of kibble, 1/2 cup chicken and 1/4 cup cottage cheese mixed together. Also they had to go and stand in the hallway outside the apartment and ring the doorbell before the dog would eat. The owner said if they didn't do this the dog wouldn't touch the food. Brian asked if they wanted it this way, they said of course not, but how else could they get him to eat. So Brian fixed this by putting down a measure of kibble mixed with the accompanying canned food. He put this down for two meal times in one day and left it for 30 minutes. The food remained untouched so he took it away after 30 mins. and threw it out. The next day he said he mixed up the food (kibble & canned) and made a big production of it, making yummy sounds as he mixed. Then he put the food down under the dog's nose, only long enough for the dog to sniff it, then picked it up and threw it in the garbage with the dog watching. He repeated this in the evening, by this time the dog was very puzzled. However, the next morning after his 1 day fast the dog cleaned his bowl and it hasn't been an issue since.

I'm not sure if I'm tough enough to try this, but I guess if it works, it might be worth a try.

So far Tegan is still drinking from the water bowl. She shares water with her 2 feline companions and in the past she would run over to her food bowl and growl if one of the cats showed an interest, but these days she doesn't seem to care.

Linda, you are probably right about it being the poodle in her. She's very poodle like and many people think she is a poodle. She has the sensitive tummy like a poodle and for a while was throwing up every morning. She even threw up on our bed last month - yuk. Sometimes it's worse than having kids, between Tegan and the 2 cats, there's never a dull moment.

 

[Paintsmeblue]

Napa's a finicky eater, or at least he was. It definitely was hard to take the food away for a while, but I think it might have worked. He's definitely a social eater. He'll eat a few pieces, come find us, go back and eat more, and continues the process. So, I think that should be taken into consideration when you take the food away. Perhaps leave it down a little bit longer than most recommend (because they're talking about dogs that naturally chow down their food), but still take it away. They won't starve themselves, so they will eat eventually.... as heartbreaking as it is for us. We were fearful that he'd start eating on his time frame, not ours. We've got classes some mornings, so he really does need to eat when we give him food so he then has plenty of time to "do his business" before we need to leave.

Good Luck!

 

[River Rat]

Chouette's not an eager eater either, and I pretty much leave her food down all the time because her trainer thought that was a good idea, and others on the forum do free-feeding too. With our other dogs we'd leave the bowl down for about ten minutes after they first walked away from it, but after that it came up and into the refrigerator until the next feeding time, since we fed our Danes moistened food with the occasional addition of scraps or gravy. Picking the dish up seems to create a greater tendency to eat it all when it's available, and that was good if we were in a time crunch or needed to add some sort of supplement, like yeast or pills. Chouette eats her food dry, which is probably better for her teeth; we do add treats sometimes, though. The constant availability IS probably contributing to her lacksadaisical attitude toward meals.

I think if I were you I'd try the Killcommons approach. He seems to have an especially good understanding of how dogs' minds work!

Leslie

 

[MaxandMe]

were any of ever on vacation and hungry enough you'd even eat something you didn't want or like? hahhahaa


i feel with dogs its a common sense thing at times. I like that guy's approach , like a reverse psychology act like the food is great and then almost say" sorry it's not for you" then later watch the dog devour the meal.


i didnt' throw out Max's food when he got finicky...i just sat and pretended this was the yummist food making sounds and kept pushing him away while i held the bowl .......he wasn't finicky after that