Hi, I'm new in the forum and this is my first post. 3 weeks ago, we adopted a black labrador baby. He's 3 months (and 1 week) old now. His name is Luca. Until we adopted Luca, he was still with his mom, and his mom was still breastfeeding him. The owners told us their vet said "As long as the mommy still produces milk to breastfeed, let him drink as much as he wants." He ate a little bit of kibble once in a while, but it was mostly milk he consumed (until he was 2.5 months old). When we brought him home, he wasn't interested in dry food, he ate about a spoonful only if we hand-fed, but that was all, so I started mixing his kibble with wet food, and that worked fine for about a week (apart from the occasional vomiting when he ate too fast) and he seemed to like the mix. Just when I thought everything was fine, he suddenly started to turn his nope up at the kibble-wet food mix. He was underweight (he still is), so I couldn't bear the idea he was not getting enough food to grow, and I looked for other ways to feed him. I started boiling chicken with no salt or oil, and I mixed his kibble with minced boiled chicken. He loved it and gobbled it up. I sometimes added a little bit of boiled carrot, peas or apple, and everything was fine. But of course after a few days, he lost his appetite for it again... Then I tried mixing kibble with different brands of wet food. Our vet gave us Hill's Prescription Diet A/D (we were told it was sold only by vets) and Luca devoured it the first time, the second time he took a sniff and didn't even look at it again. I tried Bozita Mackerel canned food, Luca hated it. He consumed a can of Dr. Clauder's puppy canned food and he seemed to like it and finished the can in 2 days (mixed with kibble) without any problems (but I'm not sure he will eat it with the same relish when I open a second can). The same thing happened with Bozita Salmon and Bozita Turkey cans as well: The first or second time he ate without any problems, after that he wasn't interested at all. Yeah I think it was me who raised a picky eater, but as I said, he is underweight and he is a growing puppy, he needs to gain calories and take vitamins so I tried to do the best I could to make him eat... The main problem here is that he is very inconsistent when it comes to food: One day he seems like what I feed him, the next day he looks at me with a "do you actually expect me to eat that?" face. Sometimes when I eat, I give him a piece of what I'm eating (as long as it's healthy for dogs) like a piece of low-salt cheese, yoghurt, carrot, banana, cucumber, etc. and he seems to like it. But the next day he is not interested in the very same food at all. Our vet told us not to feed him any human food at all, serve him only his food, leave the bowl out for 30 minutes and take it away even if he doesn't eat after 30 minutes... But when I do that, he goes hungry for 2-3 days, and I don't think it is right for a growing and quite underweight 3-month old puppy to go hungry for 3 days... What should I do? I tried warming up his kibble and adding a bit of salt-free chicken broth to his kibble as well. I have about 17 kg of dry food and I don't know how many cans at home and they're all going waste (especially the canned food, after I open them, I throw them away after 3 days and Luca never finishes a can these days, and I'm not really rich). I don't want to feed him raw meat cause I don't trust the food/meat inspections of the ministry of health in the country I'm currently residing... My latest idea is to try "satin balls" (but feed it cooked) and maybe add a bit of kibble to the mix (instead of grains). What do you think? Any suggestions? Ideas? Oh and he went through all kinds of medical controls, and he is totally healthy (no worms or anything at all) other than being underweight. I love this little monster to bits, and this problem really tires me out. I hear people say their dogs eat EVERYTHING and I get jealous... I'm sorry this turned out to be such a long post. And I will appreciate all kinds of suggestions. Thank you very much. Natalia
Often puppies do not eat much because the competition with their siblings is no longer there, so they ease off. I also think they pick up on the owners anxiety when they won't eat. It could be that he eats and then feels too full and needs to rest for a day or two. If the vet says he is healthy, I would try not to worry.
Hi and welcome! I gotta say... I'm feeling a bit dodgy about your vet because of the two quotes above. But I've got a track record of really not liking vets that sell expensive, questionable quality food or ones that seem to think that fresh whole food is somehow bad for a dog. That's like a human thinking that living off only protein bars would be a fantastic idea. Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox. Just maybe consider that your vet is great for medical stuff, maybe not the most open-minded about nutrition. I don't know why Luca only likes things once and then not the next time. Hopefully someone else has some experience with that. I do know that if he needs to put on weight and is a picky eater, what he does get down should be very calorie dense. I had a picky dog for years and some days he just wouldn't eat. He would easily get too skinny. His regular food was raw and then home-cooked and varied, but the basic ingredients were chicken/fish/eggs (about 30%), cooked veggies and fruit. It is a rare dog that will turn down anything with liver in it, so you could give that a try. Liver with anything worked about 90% of the time with my picky dog. Also adding a couple spoonfuls of oils (olive, flax seed) and a tin of sardines is good - it's usually easy to digest fat in a high-concentration. An advantage of this kind of cooked meal vs. kibble is also that you can mix it all up, put in a bowl to offer to your pup and if he doesn't take it, you can stick it in the fridge and try again later. With kibble it just gets all nasty and soggy and you end up tossing out what they don't eat right away. You can also vary the ingredients in home-prepared food, something which may be right up "I need variety" Luca's alley. Also you might try heating it up first - that always helped with my dog. If you want to keep feeding kibble, then adding some cooked liver, a bit of oil and/or sardines may also help. You could also try out a little raw to supplement the cooked or kibble. It's pretty rare that a dog turns down a raw chicken wing. I don't know if such a tiny baby would pick up on your stress or not, but I know mine did as an adult. I had to be very careful to stay neutral if he didn't eat the first time I offered the food. I would worry, then he would worry, and then he didn't want to eat even more, then I would worry more! I had to really learn to put the food down, pick it up again after 20 minutes or so, and try again in a couple hours - and skip the "Why isn't he EATING??" angst. I know, easier said than done if you are worried. And again, this is for a full grown dog who usually only ate twice a day, so skipping a day wouldn't affect him the same as a puppy who may be missing 4-5 meals if he doesn't eat in a 24 hour period. Finally, you might try different ways to actually give your pup the food. Maybe try the hand-feeding again. Try a different room in the house. A different time of the day. I had a poor little foster dog who would throw up any food you gave her unless she was in her crate, in the bedroom, with the bedroom door closed. Then she would eat like a champ. Weird! My dog Brogan would drag his food bowl from the kitchen to the living room before he would eat, so I just gave in and fed him in the living room for the rest of his life. Sometimes it makes no sense! - but whatever works!
It's a big step to go from nursing to kibble. Usually the mother is keen for the puppies to stop. Anyway, even though our puppies were eating solid food at 6 weeks old and hardly nursing at all the breeder had us prepare the kibble she used the same way she did and that was to soak it in about 1/4 of the amount of water. We were to prepare the next meal when we fed one so it soaked for several hours. This was at 8 weeks old when we got the pups. Maybe you could try soaking and use the same kibble the breeder did. What feeding guidelines did you get from the breeder?
Hi Natalia, I mostly just want to say welcome to you and your wee boy. I agree that vets are usually not particularly great at nutrition advice, and are driven a bit by the commercial factors i.e. the financial benefits from selling food they stock (sweeping statement, I know....) I think it odd that the mother was feeding the pup so long, and would guess this is the reason for being underweight. It doesn't sound like your pup has been properly weaned to me. I don't have any particular ideas other than trying hand feeding, making food a game. And if using a bowl, sardines are often attractive. We have sometimes had a picky puppy stay with us and sardines almost always do it. I hope you have some success. Sounds like you really need to get some weight on him jac
Hi and welcome. I have a fussy eater (with a very sensitive tummy) and it took ages to find a kibble she liked. I tried wet food mixed with kibble, kibble soaked, kibble with some sort of oily fish, chicken and boiled rice, scrambled egg, different veggies, wet food and BARF. After several months, we got her settled on a kibble, then after 3 weeks went off it. She is now 3 years old and has BARF (raw mince and bone mashed together brought frozen from pet shop) and kibble with fish or wet food in the evening. She likes variety so that's what we give her. How many meals a day is Luca having? I fed 4 small meals a day and also used some of the kibble for treats.
Hello and welcome to the forum. So often we hear about puppies being taken from their mothers too early, so this is a bit of a conundrum! Was your puppy the only one in the litter? Normally mums will get fed up with their puppies feeding from them and will stop them feeding at a far younger age. Not that that matters to the problem you have now - it's just out of interest! I agree with Jac that maybe you need to make food more fun for now. My puppy wasn't really interested in meals when I brought her home. Maybe it was because I was feeding her better stuff as training treats, but I'm more inclined to think that it was just because training was FUN and so she got more out of the interactive feeding. As @Stacia said, once the competition goes, sometimes it's just all a bit ... boring! I do feed my dogs from a bowl (through my own laziness) but I fully believe they get a whole lot more out of it when I make meal times interactive. That means, hiding the kibble around the room for them to find, or scattering it in the garden. Maybe use the whole allowance in training sessions throughout the day. There have been studies that show dogs prefer to work for their food than be given it "for free" - this doesn't apply for all dogs, but it's worth considering. With my puppy, who would fall asleep a few bites into her dinner, I started by simply scattering the food over the floor. This piqued her interest enough to search it out. Now, a couple of months later, she devours her food, even if it's (horror of horrors) in a bowl. Good luck and do let us know how you get on
@Emily_BabbelHund I have my doubts about our vet too. It was actually the same vet that told the breeders it would be good for Luca to stay with the mother and be nursed one more week when he was already 2 months and 1 week old, she said mother's milk would be good for Luca's immunity, but after a week they saw that he actually lost weight, so obviously one more week of mother's milk wasn't so good for Luca any more, then the vet changed her mind and told the breeders to send Luca away to his new home, that was when we got him. The breeders told us she was a good vet and she knew Luca since the day he was born, so we kept going to this vet. When I told her about Luca's eating problems, she told us not to feed him any human food at all, because in her opinion once he gets the taste of human food, which is much tastier than dog food, it would be very difficult for us to switch to kibbles if we ever want to, and kibbles contain all the nutrients he needs, so we'd better stick to the dog food and not let him "develop a taste" of human food. Oh and she also told us Luca shouldn't get used to hand-feeding, because if he gets used to that, he would never eat out of a bowl again (?) and we may not always have the time to hand-feed him, so we'd better not do that. Anyway I'm actually searching for a good vet in our neighborhood now. @Snowshoe @drjs@5 @snowbunny I saw Luca with his mother and a littermate a few times before we adopted him. They were five littermates but the others were adopted 2-3 weeks before them. In the last 2-3 weeks, it was Luca and another littermate, and in the very last week it was just Luca with his mother. The breeders told us back then that Luca was "such a mummy's boy" because he was following his mother everywhere, and he always wanted to be nursed instead of eating kibble. In fact I witnessed that the mother wanted him to stop, I saw her bark at him when he was trying to reach her teats, probably because he had teeth already and the teeth hurt her teats. The breeders also told us that in the last weeks the mother was so sick of nursing the babies that she even vomited after she ate, so that the puppies would eat the vomit instead of running after her for her milk. Oh and the breeders work full-time, so the puppies were alone with their mother the whole day, there was no one to watch them during the day, so it's quite possible that they were not properly weaned. (Even though another one of the littermates goes to the same vet now, and we were told the pup was doing fine on kibbles...) @Naya Luca has 3 meals a day now that he is older than 3 months - that is of course when he doesn't refuse to eat... :/ I have been using the same brand of kibbles that the breeders used at home, even though Luca wasn't very keen on eating kibble back there. But I have been using different brands of canned food to add some flavor to the kibbles, to increase his appetite. (I also added boiled chicken, boiled meat, etc. to his kibble sometimes to make it more enticing) Do you think using different brands of canned food upset his tummy? If that is the case, and the different kinds of food I added to his kibble upset his tummy, then maybe he lost his appetite because of this? Do you think this is possible? Am I the cause of all this? I forgot to mention in my post that he has been having digestion problems every now and then (maybe too often? I don't know, this is my first dog). When he first arrived home, he threw up the food a few times, our vet prescribed probiotics and we used them, we didn't dwell on the problem too much since he was just getting used to kibbles, and it was not a big deal, puppies may throw up sometimes if they eat too fast... But when I think about it now... Then the week after that he had diarrhea, we took him to the vet, she asked me what I fed him, I told her I mixed a quarter of an apple and a bit of calf heart (both boiled) to his kibble, the vet said that may have caused the diarrhea, prescribed some medication... And last week he vomited a few times as well, but he didn't seem sick at all, he was cheerful running around, so once again we didn't make much of it... And last night I saw he had diarrhea again (twice), so I gave him 2 cc of his diarrhea medication (oral suspension), but he did not poop ever since, it is past midnight here now, it's been 24 hours and he didn't poop, now I'm worried even more. Why didn't he poop again? Did I give him constipation this time by giving him diarrhea medication? (Too many questions, I'm sorry...) Oh and since his first set of shots is not complete yet, he is not allowed to go out yet, so it's not possible that he got a virus, etc from the street. Anyway back to the point: I'm wondering, are we experiencing these picky eater problems because I keep switching canned food to add flavor to his kibbles, and they upset his tummy, he loses his appetite, and this is why he seems unwilling to eat? Or is it because (as some people suggested) he knows if he refuses and holds out, he'll get something better (because I can't stand seeing him go hungry, so if he refuses to eat, I'll come back with something tastier) so he has me well-trained? Thank you so much all for being so helpful, really, and please forgive me for taking so much of your time. Natalia
Update: He doesn't have constipation, I guess he just doesn't poop as much cause he doesn't eat much. :/
I don't really have any advice but just wanted to say look at his little face in your avatar. He is so adorable
Hi Natalia and Luca, I was just wondering whether you were still having issues with Luca's appetite? Ziggy is three months and has just started to leave his food uneaten where before he would devour his kibble at every meal. Did Luca get over this phase ok and, if so, what is his eating like now? Lorraine
@Lozzz31 and Natalie - Are you still having the same issues? I could have written this post word for word. Puppy taken too young from her mother (breeder told us she was 8 weeks, vet said NO WAY, more like 5). She will eat a few bites but she is SO thin and it is frustrating. The only thing she likes consistently is the dried chicken breast strips from trader joes. I feel like she looks like she is starving. :/ We also got the advice to leave food for 30 minutes 3 times a day and remove.
Hi Allison, I only posted my question today so hoping that Natalia might have some good feedback. I did just try Ziggy with his kibble again with a raw egg mixed in and he's eaten it all. I also got some live organic yogurt yesterday and am trying to pluck up the courage to try him with this as I've heard it's very good for their tummies. I'm a bit worried to try it because he's prone to diarrhoea. Perhaps I'll give it a go tomorrow if I'm brave enough! Have you tried yours on egg or yogurt?
No but I will try egg today, thank you!! I am at my wits end! I will let you know. I know she likes SOME food because she goes nuts when I give her the dried chicken breast treats but that is all she "likes". Ill be back after her lunch with an update on the egg!
