Puppy gone off food

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Hi all,

Quick question, someone here might have gone through this before.

I have an 8 month old labrador/samoyed cross. She has gone completely off her food in the last few days. I thought she might be getting bored with her food, (Bakers puppy nuts and pedigree pouches) So I bought some bakers adult dog food (meaty chunks) and tried her on that. But she's still not interested. She takes treats, still attacks her kong with peanut butter, and will eat some "human" food.

She's peeing and pooing as normal, and got worming tablets only recently. The only thing that has happened out of the norm in the last while is, she went with my missus to her parents house over christmas as I was out of the country. I would suspect that maybe she was spoiled while out there and might just be turning her nose up at her regular food, but herself swears that this is not the case.

Anyone got any suggestions I could try?

Shanao

First of all, get her off the bakers and pedigree. Both are really low quality foods with a lot of chemicals in them, and she'd do so much better on a higher quality food; Burns, whites, James Wellbeloved, Select Gold, Real Nature, Luaths, Best for my dog, are just a few of the high quality brands. Get her onto one of those, and dont give her ANY human food. Its a bad habit and a lot of our foods have too much salt/sugar for dogs. Get her onto a good food and give her that, and only that. If she doesn't eat her food within fifteen minutes, take it off her and give it back to her a few hours later. She needs to get into a routine, same as ourselves. That'll take away her notions of being fussy when it dawns on her that she either eats what she's given, or she gets nothing else.

tk123

Is she spayed? If not could she be starting to go into heat?

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tk123 wrote: »

Is she spayed? If not could she be starting to go into heat?

She was spayed shortly after 6 months. So that's not the problem.

I'll taking it up after 15 minutes, and see if that helps.

lorebringer

Because she is eating "nice" stuff, this is a case of your dog being picky and choosy. Dogs are smart, they know that if something better is coming they don't have to eat what is put in front of them.

Both Bakers and Pedigree are very low quality foods. Feeding her a higher quality food (like the ones mentioned by Shano) may get her eating again.

Routine is key to getting dogs to do what you want them to - good plan on picking the bowl up after 15 minutes and (this is the hard part) don't feed your dog anything, not a scrap, until her next meal. If she is hungry, she will eat. She may go a day or two (which, is more stressful for you than it is for her) but once she gets the message that nothing better is coming, she'll eat. It is just a case of who cracks first - you or her!

The first few times you feed her with the new routine, wet the food a little with warm water to entice her to eat. This will make the food smell more tasty and she may be coaxed to have a few bites. When you are feeding her, don't pay her any attention (neither good nor bad), leave her to herself to see if she will eat or not.

Good luck!

DogsFirst

Shanao wrote: »

First of all, get her off the bakers and pedigree. Both are really low quality foods with a lot of chemicals in them, and she'd do so much better on a higher quality food; Burns, whites, James Wellbeloved, Select Gold, Real Nature, Luaths, Best for my dog, are just a few of the high quality brands. Get her onto one of those, and dont give her ANY human food. Its a bad habit and a lot of our foods have too much salt/sugar for dogs. Get her onto a good food and give her that, and only that. If she doesn't eat her food within fifteen minutes, take it off her and give it back to her a few hours later. She needs to get into a routine, same as ourselves. That'll take away her notions of being fussy when it dawns on her that she either eats what she's given, or she gets nothing else.

Disagree with some of this. The dog's loving the real food, and is telling you that but you're insisting they can't have it.

Most dry foods contain more salt than sea water. Without it the dog's won't eat it. A lab requires about 1g of salt in 400g of food, so for some of the brands you mention above with 1% NaCl, your standard lab could be eating x4 their RDA from their food every day. If humans eat just x1.5 their RDA of salt bad things happen. Fresh ingredients contain very little salt.

You say human food has too much sugar but dry food is 50 - 60% carbohydrate. All this carbohydrate is broken down to glucose by your dog. This is a massive amount of sugar for an animal, twice what it advised for omnivorous humans. The carnivores pancreas, after doing all this work must now produce enough insulin to balance this sugar load every meal of it's life. Dogs are experiencing pancreatitis at over 25 times that seen in humans. Diabetes has increased at x3.4 in the last 20 years.

Fresh ingredients are brilliant for your dog. Raw meat, chicken bits with the bones in, brilliant nutrition, natural oils, fresh high quality protein, as opposed to dry crackers with less than 20% animal protein, a long long jaunt of what the dog requires, as a carnivore.

Our routine isn't the same food every day, nor should it be for your dog. How boring!! Also leads to dietary imbalance. The idea of a "complete food" is completely false. Vitamins are included in all dry foods at the minimum required for growth. Even if you were happy with this, vitamins like C and E decrease by 30-50% over 6 months (see previous posts for refs).

Pickiness in dogs is misunderstood at any rate. Dogs avoid proteins that they do not experience in utero or in the first 3 months of life, a survival tactic to avoid poisonous mushrooms etc. Serpell (1995) demonstrated how a variety of small breed dogs (poodles, daschunds, Yorkshore terriers and Cavalier King Charles spaniels) were reared on specific diets until two years old, one of which provided a limited flavour experience in the form of a nutritionally complete puppy food and two of which provided a variety of prepared and fresh foods. “Those fed a variety of flavours showed an immediate preference for the novel food but the flavour restricted groups preferred their usual food”.

Kuo (1967) hand reared Chow Chow pups birth to six months of age on one of three diets. Those reared on a single protein diet would eat no novel food. Those reared on a mixed vegetarian diet would eat no animal protein. Those reared on a varied diet would eat any new food. In short, variety while young reduces pickiness.

Thus in the past it has been easy to conclude from our dog turning his nose up at new food that he simply doesn't like it but this says little for the nutritional value of the food item offered. He is in fact doing himself out of a food that he would ver much “like” if his little brain would give him the chance. Changing a dog fed processed food all its life to fresh ingredients is a gradual process, little bit at a time. Start with the brine juice from tuna, then 10% tuna, then 20% etc. By the end of the week they'll eat the tin.

You can take the food off the dog and starve him into submission, or you could give him something nice to eat, at least something nice on top like a tine of sardines to wash the processed crackers down. Spoon of sugar etc. Sardines are 40c in Lidl and contains more nutrition and excellent oils than the entire bag of dry food you chose, regardless of brand.

Shanao

DogsFirst wrote: »

Disagree with some of this. The dog's loving the real food, and is telling you that but you're insisting they can't have it.

I assumed by human food the OP meant the scraps of cooked meat and potatoes, carbs etc. I agree that fresh meat is far better, but for some people its not possible to get their dogs onto that kind of diet. I was simply saying that a high quality dry food would be far better than scraps and bakers/pedigree

DogsFirst

Agree with you there!!

MarthaMyDear

My grandad is a vet and he swears by putting a tin of sardines in with his dogs food. He gets the cheap ones from Lidl/Aldi. His dog adores them and her coat is unbelievably shiny! It makes her a lot more interested in the dry dog nuts as she had started ignoring them.

DogsFirst

Dead on!! Hey any chance you could ask your Grandad what they fed dogs before vets started pushing dry food? Does he see any difference in skin conditions the way it was and the way it is today etc......?! That sort of info is gold dust in the battle against the use of processed food as "the best nutrition for your dog".

MarthaMyDear

DogsFirst wrote: »

Dead on!! Hey any chance you could ask your Grandad what they fed dogs before vets started pushing dry food? Does he see any difference in skin conditions the way it was and the way it is today etc......?! That sort of info is gold dust in the battle against the use of processed food as "the best nutrition for your dog".

I'll ask him and report back

DogsFirst

Excellent, appreciate that. Marthamydear, what a tune