Puppy food for possibly fussy pup?

[sloewine]

I’ve had my pup for about a month and he’s a bit fussy (holding out for chicken I suspect!). He will hoover up anything you drop though so he can’t be that picky!!

He’s been on wainwrights puppy but that gave him the sh*ts, swapped to Millies Wolfheart and he’s now refusing that unless mixed in with wet food.

I’d be happy to feed all wet but he gets the worst gas and diarrhoea from it.

Anyway I’m not sure whether to try something else like Forthglade or Wolfworthy. I had thought about feeding raw but I’m not keen on handling it all.

He’s an active 5 month old Collie cross.

Feel like my heads going to explode looking at all the options on all about dog food etc

I mix MW with barking heads wet. Just a small bit. Dog loves it. All varieties of wet apart from beef as she finds that too rich.

Im fine with mixing if it means it’s nice to eat.

Rather than swapping around I'd just keep mixing with some wet, that's what we did with our fussy one. Some days we mix with forthglade 90%, other days fish or some egg.

I had exactly the same problem with my collie mix lurcher, she wouldn’t eat any food after two or three meals of the same one. Went from the wainwrights she came with from the breeder to Orijen, then acana (all puppy foods) mixing various things in, we had several large almost full puppy food bags in storage at once, luckily a lot of people were getting (lockdown) dogs at the same time and we just gave them away when she went off them (once she decided she didn’t like a food, we could never get her to eat it again). I fed her raw when she just turned two, she absolutely refused to eat raw chicken (clever girl) so I had to cook that part for her, I then put her back on kibble after she broke a tooth and had exposed pulp, I didn’t like the idea of raw anything touching that tooth and causing an infection. I put her on Arden grange performance (lower daily requirement, she doesn’t eat a lot so foods with lower grams/day) she ate that for a while then stopped eating, she’s now almost three and has been on hills science plan mobility support mixed with naturediet for 7 months and absolutely loves it. Collies are notoriously fussy eaters, especially as puppies.
The most success we had with her eating as a puppy was games, hiding her food around the house and garden and letting her sniff it out, but she still went off foods, even if the games made her eat them quicker while she was happy to eat them at all.

What's the issue with mixing it with wet food? Or does he still get a bad stomach if you do that?

I've just moved my lab from raw to dry and have found Burns sensitive to be excellent. They do a puppy version. Mine is just 3 and never had issues eating, but he is a sensitive soul.