Need help with picky eater :/

1346 Views 3 Replies 3 Participants Last post by Thisisme19, Jan 18, 2016

Thisisme19

Discussion Starter · Jan 15, 2016

Hey guys,

The little monster has been driving me up the wall with his picky eating habits. Wondering if anyone has a dog that's been a picky eater that they managed to get to eat on a regular basis?

Tucker is a year old and slightly underweight. Can't see/feel his ribs but you can feel and see a bit of his spine. Has a bunch of energy and is a happy little dude.

He gets fed twice a day. 7:30am & pm. Most of the time I'll put his food in his bowl and it'll sit for hours before he eats it.

3-4x a week he'll get his morning food in his kong wobbler with a couple treats mixed in. Most of the time it's empty when I get home from work. He has daycare once a week, and usually spends minimum 1 day a week at a friends house with their dogs during the day, in these instances I need him to eat before we leave the house, so I have been giving him freeze dried raw pucks, He usually eats these up no problem - although lately he doesn't seem to be as keen on them.

On the weekends he's usually around other dogs so I'll either hand feed him, or have to watch his food bowl until he'll eat it, The presence of the other dogs seems to help him want to eat his food. (none of them are resource guarders and all are perfectly content to go sniffing around in each others bowls) Some times him and one of the other dogs will eat eachothers food, which is fine for that instance. But I'd really like him to eat his own food when I put his bowl down and call it a day.

Currently trying him on Acana regional. He was on Orijen Tundra for a while, ate it with some minor success, but was still a battle. He's got an iron stomach, can switch to different proteins or foods while little to no affect on his stomach or stool. I've tried Honest Kitchen, all the Orijen flavours, and a bunch of Acana ones. He usually follows a pattern where I'll get a new flavour or food and he'll eat it for a couple days no problem then becomes disinterested. He did this with 4 different types of puppy food as well. The other dogs he's around get HK, and he always seems interested in that, so I tried it as his everyday food, ate it for about a week and then same thing. However given the chance when all 3 dogs are together he'll eat their food (I think this has more to do with getting the same food as the other dogs, have fed all 3 his kibble when they're together and he scarfed that down)

I thought maybe he'd grow out of it if I just kept offering the same food. Didn't work when through 3 bags of the same Orijen food before switching. Which was an uphill battle. I've tried soaking it in water, adding treats, sprinkling some of the freeze dried treats on top, mixing in treats. Every I think I've finally found a solution, a couple meals later he's bored again.

Have thought about feeding raw but just won't work out logistically for our current lifestyle.

Any ideas?

Also sorry for the rambliness of the post. Just trying to get everything down.

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icemaiden

· #2 · Jan 17, 2016

Perhaps he gets what he needs from what he eats. If he is full of energy doesn't sound like his is starving himself. And some dogs just are not that interested in food yet stay healthy. I know a border terrier whose owner says he lives on air, yet the dog is fit and healthy and happy.

I wouldn't leave his food bowl down for more than 10 minutes. If he doesn't eat it in that time, well in my house, he'd have to wait till the next meal time.

I had a fussy puppy once, very much as you describe your dog, but that was instanly cured when I put him on raw. So may be reconsider if that could be tried?

PS Caution - I tried to get him to eat by allowing other dogs around but I think I created a food resource guarder. Took long while to train out then. Whilst he may not be guarding food that doesn't particularly interest him, if you find food he really likes, he feelings might change.

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steen1121

· #3 · Jan 17, 2016

I just went through a very similar experience with my 8 month old puppy. She decided she no longer liked her puppy food. She was on Orijen puppy and seemed very disinterested and was maybe eating a half a cup a day. I was concerned since she seemed to be losing some weight. Her activity level remained normal.

I started cycling through foods and just like the experience you had she would eat it for a couple of days and then be disinterested again. This cycle continued for over 3 weeks. I received a bunch of samples from my local pet store, and had tried a bunch of brands and flavors. She also has an iron stomach so switching things up doesn't bother her.

I finally decided that I had enough with this cycle, so I decided to buy one brand of food that had a variety of flavors. For us that was Earthborn Holistic. I buy the 5 pound bags and switch the flavors. It was a hard at first and she still wasn't eating much, but things have gotten so much better. She gets 3/4 cup at 7:30 with her probiotic and coconut oil. She has roughly 30 minutes to eat it and if she doesn't eat it then that is fine and I put it up and save it for dinner. She gets another 3/4 cup between 5-6. I add it to any food she had left in her bowl.

I think that for us the problem was she was getting too many options and knew that if she stopped eating she would get something different. She now will eat her full bowl almost every feeding time and if she doesn't I don't worry so much about it.

I hope that helps! It can be really stressful when your dog isn't eating. I know it was for me.

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Thisisme19

Discussion Starter · #4 · Jan 18, 2016

icemaiden said:
Perhaps he gets what he needs from what he eats. If he is full of energy doesn't sound like his is starving himself. And some dogs just are not that interested in food yet stay healthy. I know a border terrier whose owner says he lives on air, yet the dog is fit and healthy and happy.

I wouldn't leave his food bowl down for more than 10 minutes. If he doesn't eat it in that time, well in my house, he'd have to wait till the next meal time.

I had a fussy puppy once, very much as you describe your dog, but that was instanly cured when I put him on raw. So may be reconsider if that could be tried?

PS Caution - I tried to get him to eat by allowing other dogs around but I think I created a food resource guarder. Took long while to train out then. Whilst he may not be guarding food that doesn't particularly interest him, if you find food he really likes, he feelings might change.

Thanks for the warning but I haven't been feeding him around other dogs to try and make him eat. It just happens that when he's around other dogs and it's food time he is more apt to eat when I put his food down instead of waiting 3 hours to eat. He shows no interest in guarding his food (or anything actually, Tucker loves to share) and would happily share his kibble with the other dogs, even when they get super high value treats the 3 of them just sit and wait until they are given their treat.

steen1121 said:
I just went through a very similar experience with my 8 month old puppy. She decided she no longer liked her puppy food. She was on Orijen puppy and seemed very disinterested and was maybe eating a half a cup a day. I was concerned since she seemed to be losing some weight. Her activity level remained normal.

I started cycling through foods and just like the experience you had she would eat it for a couple of days and then be disinterested again. This cycle continued for over 3 weeks. I received a bunch of samples from my local pet store, and had tried a bunch of brands and flavors. She also has an iron stomach so switching things up doesn't bother her.

I finally decided that I had enough with this cycle, so I decided to buy one brand of food that had a variety of flavors. For us that was Earthborn Holistic. I buy the 5 pound bags and switch the flavors. It was a hard at first and she still wasn't eating much, but things have gotten so much better. She gets 3/4 cup at 7:30 with her probiotic and coconut oil. She has roughly 30 minutes to eat it and if she doesn't eat it then that is fine and I put it up and save it for dinner. She gets another 3/4 cup between 5-6. I add it to any food she had left in her bowl.

I think that for us the problem was she was getting too many options and knew that if she stopped eating she would get something different. She now will eat her full bowl almost every feeding time and if she doesn't I don't worry so much about it.

I hope that helps! It can be really stressful when your dog isn't eating. I know it was for me.

Thanks, I started doing this with him this weekend. No real change in his eating habits yet. Hopefully he picks it up quickly.

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