Rescue dog gone off food

[Chesterhenry]

Hi all,

We’ve had our rescue girl for two months now, and we’ve found it difficult to get her diet right. She had very loose and runny stools at first so gave her chicken and rice to help settle her stomach and then weaned her onto Burns sensitive dog food with a boiled egg mixed in. She was loving this but just this week has stopped eating the majority of the dry food.

My question is do we persevere, hoping that she’ll eventually eat if hungry enough? Or should we switch dog food? She is a small terrier mix and I know these type of dogs can be a bit fussy. I just don’t want to spend a fortune on more expensive foods only for her not to eat them!

[BiteyShark]

Have a look on allaboutdogfood.co.uk to compare food quality and price across brands.

To be honest kibble isn't the most exciting thing for a dog to eat as it isn't very smelly/tasty. Looking at that website burns sensitive is very low on meat content so if it was me I would choose something else (I typically feed wet but 70% named meat content).

If you do choose to swop I always mix a small amount of old food with the new so it doesn't get wasted.

[missbattenburg]

Battendog gets a variety of foods - I have about 6 or 7 brands that I think are good quality and just change up what he gets as often as I can. Not all dogs would tolerate that (upset tummy) but Battendog does fine and there is an added bonus that I don;t have to worry about not being able to source a specific food because he will eat a variety.

I used allaboutdogfood to narrow down the brands I thought good enough for the little springer prince

I also add diffferent toppers with some regularity - all of which are cheap. Raw egg, spoonful of natural yoghurt, veggies from dinner, half a tin of sardines or mackerel, left over grated cheese, leftover meat from dinner. That kind of thing. (I recall a study in which dogs regular fed leftover veggies had a massive decrease in bladder cancer - odd fact of the day for you.)

The result is that most meals are a little bit different each time, with minimum effort from me

[BiteyShark]

Similar to missbattenburg in that I feed different wet brands and different flavours within those brands. I simply swop them every day so he gets something different.

[missbattenburg]

On small terriers, in particular, we also have 2 x JRTs (not strictly my dogs) who are fed kibble but who have a splash of water and a small spoonful of wet added and mixed round. This just makes it wetter and tastier for them and they eat it happily. They would be picky about just dry kibble.

If your dog has a more sensitive tummy and won't tolerate swapping regularly, this could also be an easy (and cheap) option.

[adaline]

Mine gets bored of kibble so easily so we tend not to bother with it. Sometimes I use it to stuff a Kong or to fill out some wet food but he much prefers wet.

[adaline]

Meant to add like PP we switch between a few brands otherwise he gets bored of that too!

[DogInATent]

Nip to the corner shop, get a tin of Pedigree Chum and stir a couple of spoonfuls through the kibble. Yes, it's cheap stuff and won't be rated highly by AllABoutOrganicDogFood - but I bet she wolfs it down.

[MrsCasares]

Have you tried Forthglade wet? My little terrier mix loves it. They do loads of varieties too.

[Chesterhenry]

Thanks everyone for the replies. We did have her on a bit of wet food mixed with her dry but she was having very runny poos so stopped it. I thought the soft boiled egg would help with the fact that kibble is pretty boring, but no joy. We might need to just try a few other brands. We did have her on Lily’s kitchen and she loved it but it’s so expensive

[DogInATent]

Deals on Lily's Kitchen come up on Amazon quite regularly - with a very decent discount.