Another fussy eater thread

[3AndADog]

So the last week or so, 1 year old pup has stopped eating all but treats. She was on canagan dry with Lily’s wet. She literally backs away from the bowl now. I tried Lily’s dry with Edward Cooper wet - she wolfed it down then has backed away from it ever since. She used to love applies wet food - not any more. Won’t go near it.

The vet kept her in overnight last week as she hadn’t eaten and barely drunk in a week - she’s fine, had a fluid drip, but ultimately diagnosis was fussy eater.

the only two complete dog foods I can get her to eat, I can’t afford. They are natures variety freeze dried bites, which would work out at £25 a week, or the Lily’s kitchen breakfast biscuits. And even those she only eats as training treats, I’m happy to do that twice a day but I can’t really afford it long term. The natures variety stuff she adores so I’m looking for a freeze dried option that is priced lower - does any one have any suggestions?

as for water, she only eats ice cubes from my hand or water from a stream/puddle. Won’t go near a water bowl! Not ideal in a heatwave.

Has she had a season?

Just a thought, but might she eat it out of a treat dispensing toy, rather than a bowl?

My new pup wasn’t keen on the kibble we brought him home from the breeder with. He would just leave in his bowl for so long I was starting to worry about him, but I needed time to transition him onto his new food, so he had to keep having it. If we put it in a treat ball or snuffle mat though he scarfed it down. I suppose the game was rewarding enough for it not to matter what the ‘treats’ were.

For fluids. I make up doggie ice-pops from Oralade drinks for dogs. (I prefer the GI support version to the hydrate one for dogs that aren’t eating well.) That way, even if they only take a bit, they are getting the right electrolytes and will be better hydrated than with just water. It obviously depends on the size of your dog, but for my big dogs I bought silicone ice-pop/popsicle moulds like these and for my new toy breed I use an ice cube tray in the shape of little bones. You can also do it with bone broth, which helps hydrate with added nutrition.

Another thought was, many years ago, I had a puppy that was scared of her bowl. All it took was it making an squeaking noise on the tiles once and she would avoid it at all costs after that. Is it worth trying her with a different bowl? Maybe just trying a tupperware box or something to see if it makes any difference.

A couple more ideas. Does the bowl need to be raised? I had one dog who didn’t like eating out of a bowl when she had her collar on - the dog tag clinked on the bowl. Could this apply to the water bowl.You could sprinkle the dry kibble on the floor, and use a licky mat for the wet. Change the bowls around, deep, flat. Does the bowl move across the floor at she eats, some dogs don’t like that. Does it help if you sit with her, or hand feed. Feed her lots of very small meals. Not ideal, but at least it gets you started.

my dog also preferred her wet food at room temperature. Food from the fridge has less taste and smell.

I think a lot of dogs get bored easily of their food. A dog I was feeding recently wasn’t eating their kibble, but would if I dropped a raw egg in it. And he would eat more when I fed him in the kitchen where I was, rather than the boot room on his own.

I take it the vet checked her teeth. What is her poo like? Is she a big or small dog.

I should have said in my original post, I have tried spreading the wet food on licky mats, in kongs, frozen kongs. I’ve tried scatter feeding with kibble, snuffle mats and in treat dispensers/games. She just won’t eat it.

she’s a cockapoo if you hadn’t already guessed 🤣 medium sized - a month ago she was 13kg, since a big hair cut and giving up on eating she’s gone down to 12.3kg.

she definitely doesn’t like to eat alone, but I also think she senses my desperation when I sit with her and try to coax her.

I’ve been to the pet shop and bought some JR pate to try, they said I could grate it so it mixes in really well. Also bought a load of different sachets of wet food. It’s annoying you can’t buy small amounts of kibble as I can’t keep forking out on massive bags for her to reject.

I haven’t tried raising the bowl or any different bowls - I’ll try that next!

Her poo is good, hard and regular, but the amount has halved over the past week or so.

Part of me thinks she’s so fussy she would eat if I gave her a totally different meal each time. But like me really. But I can’t do that!

If you email the pet food manufacturers a lot have sample bags if you ask

I can't help with the food....mine is fussy and changes her mind every few months about her food. She's costing €35 a week in wet food at the moment.
I saw a trick about getting the dog to drink from a bowl. Just put a tiny amount of milk in...a quarter of a capful. It shows up in the water and makes it easier for the dog to see - sometimes they think the bowl is empty.
I tried it and she dived straight in.

Watching with interest…another cockapoo owner here, I think it’s common amongst this breed. I’ve lost track of the number of brands I’ve gone though at great cost. Currently on Butchers wet food and Lily’s kitchen dry for puppies, which up until a week ago he would happily eat.
He also gets homemade mince, liver, brown rice, sweet potato and peas for dinner - again he would wolf that down and would sit in front of the freezer until I took it out to defrost. Now he’s turning his nose up at that too.
I’ll put out his kibble because I don’t want him to starve, but if he’s very hungry he is a bit sick so I want to avoid that happening - and so give in and give him some sliced chicken or whatever. He will happily eat whatever we have (within reason obvs), human food is far more interesting to him. Drives me insane.

I’ve had the same with my nine month old. I finally bit the bullet and tried butternut box - I cried with relief when he ate the lot and came back for more.

He’s been on it a few days and eaten every meal. He’s on 200g a day which is about £45 a month.

When I’ve seen other people write about butternut with the same story I’ve just thought they were paid for posters as it sounded too good to be true. But so far for us it’s solving the problem.

I'd try her with raw. Lots of variety and interesting smells and textures.

I can’t do raw - 3 small children and a VERY licky dog (and the 5 year old especially allows a lot of licking)

butternut box isn’t an option, they don’t deliver to where we live, plus it’s on the pricey side.

I’ve bought a load of new things, so far she has enjoyed nature’s variety wet food but left the kibble and it’s too pricey for long term anyway.

she liked natures menu country hunter wet but again left some kibble. She actually ate more of this meal and I wonder if it’s because I used the smaller puppy sized kibble.

she is really enjoying the Lily’s kitchen breakfast biscuits as training treats which are a complete food so at least I know she’s getting some food although it would be a hello if a lot easier to be able to put a bowl down and leave her to it.

I tried grating the pate into the kibble and she didn’t go for it but she’s currently eating some pate and biscuits out of a Kong.

Instead of chopping and changing food all the time, and offering her treats, what happens if you just offer her food at mealtimes and give her nothing else?

The advice from our breeder when our dog went through a fussy phase was to pick a food we know he likes, pick two set mealtimes per day and stick to it. So, for us, he got fed at 7am and 3pm. We put his food down and gave him twenty minutes to eat. If he didn't eat, the bowl was removed and he got nothing else until his next mealtime - no treats, no tidbits from our plates - nothing.

Next mealtime, we fed him again. Again, if he ignored it, he got nothing else. We only had to repeat this for about three mealtimes before he got the picture and ate his dinner, and he's never skipped a meal since.

I have tried that (makes total sense) and that’s how she ended up overnight at the vet, dehydrated.

also, how do you train without treats? How do you leave them home alone without a licky mat or king or something to occupy them?

I must admit though, all the chopping and changing and trying new things can’t be great for her stomach. Whenever you read about introducing new food it’s supposed to be gradual over a couple of weeks, not something different every few days! I guess that’s dependent on your dog having a food they eat to begin with 🙄

We’ve tried that too, but unfortunately he just won’t eat and is sick with a sort of bile which apparently is a fairly common thing with cockapoos. I think it’s called the hunger pukes or something like that, and ours would rather not eat than eat something he doesn’t like. On one cockapoo Facebook group someone was posting about this and the longest their dog turned their nose up at their food for was 6 days 😲 which obviously meant a trip to the vet at £££s.

Our lab lost a kilo in two weeks (and this was when she was young so a reasonable percentage of her weight) when we tried the tough love approach.

We finally found a combination that works for us but it wasn't easy. Especially when you have a lab and people assume they'll eat anything and tell you they'll eat if they're hungry enough whilst they get skinner before your eyes. She now has the same dry food everyday but with wet on top in rotation (forthglade 90% for 2 days, then fish4dogs for a day). It does work out quite expensive (an extra pound per day for wet food)

We used to get the hunger pukes too which then put her off eating even more.

When you feed dry kibble, are you literally serving it dry? Or mixing it with, say, a spoonful of any wet food and hot water as a gravy to make it smell more interesting?

Our Rommie is on Tails (delivered) after being fussy about Harringtons. She wolfs it most days although the heat this week has put her off a few of her meals again.

We didn't do any training with him for a few days - all walks were on the lead, which he hated lol.

Mine is never left alone with food as I worry about him choking or finishing the food and trying to eat the kong or mat. He choked in front of me once (on a natural treat) and it scared the living shit out of me - if I hadn't been there he may well have died, so since that day, he only gets treats if someone is around to supervise him.

It must be really difficult when you know she likes the food and she's just being picky. Will she eat her normal kibble if you feed it during training or something during the day?

We’ve tried serving kibble in a variety of different ways. If it’s a day he’s eating kibble (because the full moon is in Capricorn or something, who knows) then he’ll eat it plain or covered in whatever - other days he looks at the bowel and then at me with a ‘wtf’ expression. It’s getting ridiculous - I thought dogs ate anything? Maybe I should cover his dinner in fresh horse poo and puddle water, he’d eat it then.

Same here - literally the other day she was eating kibble out of my hand as training treats - the next day she won’t eat it hidden in wet food, liver sprinkles and hot water. She is SO fussy.

Have you tried salmon oil squirted on her kibble? My spaniel came to us on royal canine and then went off it, we tried Harrington’s which upset his stomach and then Millie’s wolfheart (you can buy this in small test amounts on the website), and when he was showing signs of going off the Millie’s (and we’d also tried scattering, feeding as treats, puzzle toys, hiding it in rolled-up towels etc) someone suggested salmon oil and it worked like a charm. He hadn’t eaten a full meal from a bowl in months but he did then and after a few months of eating regularly twice a day we stopped bothering with the oil and he’ll now eat anything no matter how you give it to him. You need pure salmon oil with no additives, just squirt a bit on. He does also love tuna if you want to test out if your dog likes fish first.

Oh, plus, when I was having this issue with my dog, a friend who’d been raw feeding from the start was having the exact same issue with her dog, so I concluded it wasn’t worth swapping to raw. I knew a dog that nearly died from an infection from raw feeding so had no intention of trying it anyway, but everyone online claimed it was miraculous for fussy eaters so I was beginning to think it would be my only option.

We had similar, we've just transitioned into Eden (sample bags are available to order online) and it's been a game changer. I wonder if the semi moist might be a good option for your dog as I sense she isn't a fan of crunching!