dog's gone off food .. advice please?

[bubbleschimp]

hi all,

i have a 8 month old golden retriever/lab mix who's usually fed on a specific premium puppy food (clinivet ) , normally he eats it no problem but in the last few days he seems very reluctant to eat it .

tonight i got him a new food dish in case something about the old dish spooked him , i also got a pouch of meaty mixer and mixed this in which he then ate no problem. (he had ignored the food all evening previously).

my question is ,
should i keep feeding him like this ( i.e with the mixer every day ) or should i move him onto a new dry food altogether? or any other suggestions ?

thanks
bubbles

bump ..

one last hopeful bump ??

I would be tempted to feed him something different - one of mine doesn't like certain foods so I feed him other stuff. As long as he's getting the nutrients he needs then I wouldn't worry. My only cause for concern would be if he displayed other signs signifying illness. I reckon he's just bored ...

My JRT recently started refusing to eat his dry food as soon as we mixed meat in with it though he ate the lot! Probably just bored with biscuits all the time wouldn't you be?

Sounds bored to me too.... same food every day would make me bored too..

My lab went off her food suddenly but was keen to have treats and showed no signs of upset tummy.

I changed her to a different dry food and she was 'woofed' it down - I put it down to a bad batch of food - who knows ?

Yup, agree with bored. happens with mine regularly, about every 3rd sack of food. So we have to keep ringing the changes to keep it interesting. Can't say I blame them - kibble is a little uninspiring really, though very good for them I am sure!

They get bored with the same flavour food, We feed Wainwrites wet and dry and get the box of mixed flavour trays and alternate the dry flavour everytime we buy it.

i thought with labs it was a bad idea to change to food (i.e it causes stomach upsets) .?

he hoovered down the food tonight when a pouch of wet food was mixed in so must just be the boredom . he seems fine and healthy apart from turning his nose up at the dry food .. boredom it must be

as in change foods to often ..

You don't need to change foods, just the flavour, they bored of eating something that tastes the same all of the time, adding a a bit of hot water to dry food now and again can help too, changes the smell and consistency a bit for them.

Every few days mix in a tin of sardines in tomato sauce with a little less kibble. It's stinky (most dogs love stinky food!) and it's oily fish which is really good for their coats! I get sardines from tesco, 42p a tin, way cheaper than lots of wet pouches!
Also yy to warm water! The rescue suggested this when my rescue greyhound wouldn't eat, so I poured a little warm water over his kibble and he was delighted, thought it was gravy :o