Advice on Feeding

Caley is now 9 months old, but we are starting to have a few problems with feeding.

She is on two meals a day, one in the morning and one in the evening. She has dry food and a tiny bit of wet with it, she has been perfectly fine with this.

However, in the last few weeks she has been turning her nose up at her morning feed, she might have a few mouthfuls but that is it. She is perfectly fine and happy, toilet normal, plays fine, goes for walks fine, eats her little treats fine and will eat her evening dinner fine, which is no different to her morning feed. She is a little minx though, because if I give her something different in the morning with her dry food, like sardines, chicken even the most tiny bit of cheese on it (not even a teaspoon) she will then eat it all. I try not to do this though, so I end up picking her plate up after an hour and she goes the rest of the day with nothing.

Could it be that she is just not a morning dog, we are back at work/school next week and I am reluctant to leave her food down (especially with wet food in it). Should I just give her dry food to graze on during the morning while we are out and then give her a larger portion of dinner in the evening. We currently feed her at 7am and 7pm.

Thanks for any help

I've always left the food down for 10-15 minutes and than picked it up. If Suki is being picky and holding out for something more tasty I'll reduce the amount of treats she gets throughout the day.

They won't let themselves starve or get sick from lack of food if it's available. It's a matter of choice between taking the hard line and removing the food or adding things to make it taste better for them. We are lucky in that Suki very rarely will turn down anything that is edible.

Does she scoff her evening meal? She might not be very hungry in the morning so you could increase her evening meal. Lexi only gets fed once a day but her kibble is left down and she picks at it all day, her wet is fed on its own just in the morning.

Yes, she eats her evening meal extremely quickly, there is no hesitation lol.

She has her last walk before her evening meal so is really hungry, we normally feed her in the morning before she has a walk as she does not normally go for her morning walk until mid morning when my son comes home from college, this is because we leave early in the morning for work/school and she is normally still lazing around and not bothered. I do wonder if it is because she is just not hungry as she has had no exercise from her evening meal...

Logan is very similar with this issue at times. He can be very picky with his evening meal but eats his morning meal with no drama. He has been doing this on and off from he was roughly the same age as Casey. He is fed a mixture of dry food with a great mince my butcher makes for me, along with various mashed veg (potatoes, broccoli, carrots etc)

There are a few things I did to combat his resistance to eat.

1. Firstly, before I even let him see the full dish I would hand him two or three bits of the meat (which he loves) from my hand, which normally has him licking his chops to get at the rest.

2. Olive Oil - Seems to be the solution to a lot of issues I've had including dry, rough paws. He loves it. Put a tablespoon in with your meal and stir it through. Chances are Caley will love the taste too.

3. When she stops eating just take away the dish with no fuss. The stupidest thing I did was when I began to kneel down and hand feed him. He became to expect it. I now just take the dish away calmly, set it on the kitchen bench and give it back to him in 5-10 mins.

4. Finally. This one might seem silly, but Logan is a pretty quirky animal. I change the dish! Once he stops eating I take it away and what's left on a cheap plastic plate. For whatever reason this makes him want to eat more.

Maybe some of these ideas will work for your pup. My girlfirend has an incredibly picky staff and these little things normally have her eating a lot more.

Good Luck,
Mat

Zeus is starting to get like this too, over the past few weeks, he'll eat around half of his morning meal and leave the rest.

But he scoffs his evening meal down, I thought this was because of the particular food we're giving him, but thinking about it now, it could actually be because he doesn't like eating much in the morning.

Yeh Ledger is not so fussed in the morning sometimes but then when Im working early and up at 4.30am he wont get out of bed until the last minute before I have to go! he now gets a slightly smaller amount and more in the evening but quite often he just wants a hot breakfast! I add a bit of hot water over his kibble and cool it down so there is a gravy and then it goes straight away!