Picky Eaters

Feeding your dog home cooked food at pre-set times during the day is the best way to ensure your dog is properly fed. As tempting as it is, never feed your dog food from your own dinner. The fat content, colourings and more can very detrimental to your dog's health. This will also affect your dogs coat and teeth. I have a section for dogs who won't eat. 

If choosing manufactured food, you will just need to experiment a bit. Do not buy large quantities of dog food until you have discovered the flavour or flavours that your dog likes.

Your dog may also be just testing you to see what else you will give them. Before we start to experiment with different food, we test that resolve.  Don't allow your dog to graze throughout the day - more picky eaters are created this way. Also, you don't always know how much they've eaten or when they ate - something which is very important if you ever have an emergency or planned procedure at the vets; they will always want to know when your dog last ate.

We recommend feeding adults just once a day. This will not only solve the issue with the vet, but will also help you to regulate toilet routines.

To avoid your dog just attempting to blackmail you into giving them something "nicer", put their food bowl down and what they haven't eaten within 15 minutes goes back in the feed bin.  Next day, do the same; giving their normal allowance of food.  Even the most stubborn dog will only go a few days without eating before giving up and eating what you give them; so be patient.  As long as they are drinking normally, a healthy adult can go almost a week without eating.  

When dealing with dogs under 6 months, however, you need to be more careful.