Lost of Interest In Food
Eowyn has recently lost interest in her food. She was never crazy for 'Dog food', only the first two days when having her. When she was 12 weeks old. But, she's eaten pretty much normal. But about a month ago, she totally wouldn't eat anything, so we bought her white fish. She loved that but quickly went off that. So we started buying her cubed steak and cooking that up and mixing it in with her biscuits. She ate that very well! But now, she won't touch it. I mean real beef. I thought any dog would kill for that. The only time she will eat it is if I hand feed it to her. (Which I don't do all the time) But if I don't, she won't even sniff it and she acts as if she is terrified of it. If I put it down in front of her, she backs away eyeing it and then hides in the bathroom. What's going on?! I walk her a lot, exercise her a lot, play with her a lot. She still won't eat. It takes forever for her to finally eat. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm at the end of my rope here...
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Apryl on
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I had trouble back in the day trying to feed Oliver. I would sit with him on the kitchen floor for an hour or more waiting for him to finish eating. He went down to 16 pounds (although he's a petite corgi). I finally had my vet take a look at him, and she gave me some panacur (for parasites) just as a protective measure. I did that, but that didn't seem to make too big of a difference, but it didn't hurt. I then switched his food and found out that he didn't like his old food, because he was all of a sudden licking his plate clean. However, I had to kind of stretch his stomach muscles out a little because he was eating so little, so I started with small portions, and started adding more and more.
I would frequently take some sort of sauce (like Iams savory sauce) and mix it with the dry food to moisten it a little, just to get the food down if he wouldn't finish it dry. That seemed to work sometimes.
THEN, I started giving him his FAVORITE treat (greenies) after he finished his bowl, and he now is in the habit of finishing his food because he know what he gets at the end. I think this was the one thing that helped the most.
I feed Oliver Purina Pro Plan. I've tried about 5 different brands on him (tried to get him into really healthy stuff, but he wasn't havin' it) and realized that this was working, so I wasn't going to mess with it.
Hope she starts eating soon!
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Permalink Reply by CaptainCorgi on
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Was it positive that he had parasites? I hope Eowyn doesn't have any. I'm going get her under pet insurance and take her to the vet. I'm definitely going to keep up with trying to get her back to normal feeding. I think taking her to the vet first is the main priority. Thank you!
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No, his fecal exams were negative, but she said it wouldn't hurt. I probably could have gone without it, but I wasn't going to risk it if he was really sick.
She's still fairly young, right? Oliver basically had his eating problem from last June til this February. And all throughout that time, he was on this one bag of food that he was not a fan of. I'd suggest maybe even getting something like ALPO and mix that in with some decent dry food. That's what I did for a while just to get him to eat, and that seemed to work. I think the main thing you should do though (since I went through pretty much the same thing) is find a food that she likes. Second, find a treat that she likes, and fill her bowl with a little bit of food. When she clears her bowl, give her the treat. Then you can continue to do this until she hopefully gets conditioned to expect the treat.
I swear - Oliver weighs 24 pounds now, and he looks great. I feed him 1 1/3 cups of food every day, and I'm SOOOOO happy to not have to spoon feed him. (PS - I modified my previous post to add a little more detail, I'm not sure if you read the first version or the new version)
One last thing I do now is that Oliver eats one meal a day. When he got back into the groove of eating, I tried to switch him to 2x a day, and then he stopped eating again - so I switched back to one time. Obviously this can be just applicable to Oliver's case, but sometimes you gotta continue switching it up until something works.
Good luck!
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Thanks for the advice, I just re-read the post you edited. =) Sorry for saying "I've tried that" but I've tried the ALPO lol! That was one meat she did eat for a while, she liked tbe square sliced one for a while, but totally went off them too. I've been doing that treat thing at the end of her meal too, but she still hasn't really gotten the hang of it. (Just now as I write, my twin played with her with the food bowl in one hand and now she's eating it!!! I think I see light at the end of the tunnel!)
I've notice with Eowyn she only eats once a day, she rarely ate two bowls a day. She's 19 lbs right now, and needs a bit more to fill out. I'd like her to be over 20. I'm going to keep trying to find new ways of how she likes to eat, maybe she's trying to tell me but I'm not listening hard enough! Thank you so much for the advice!
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No problem! I know how frustrating it is. You would figure that getting their weight up would never be a problem!!!
Yeah, it's a lot of trial and error, but hang in there!
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Yeah, it confuses me so because all I've ever heard about corgis is you have to watch their weight because they love to eat. Now I have to watch her weight decreasing! Thank you!
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I wish Eowyn would do that!
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Permalink Reply by Geri & Sidney on
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StripedTiger, I was thinking about Eowyn today and wondering if she's eating better yet.
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Hi there--
Amazingly yesterday, she ate a whole bowl of dry biscuits. I was so happy! But, it didn't last long. I tried her again with some this morning and she just ignored it. Oh well, I keep trying though. Thank you for your thoughts!
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Permalink Reply by Kim on
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A loss of appetite could be a sign of a medical problem, but is her energy level is normal and there's not vomitting or diarrhea, then it's probably behavioral.
Dogs should not eat anything besides a high quality dog food. mixing the food with things like fish, chicken or steak can upset the stomach and cause things like pancreatitis. aside from that, it just makes your dog spoiled. they start to learn that they can get whatever they want from you and you will bow to their every whim. and it worked. she didn't like the fish, so you bought her steak. she's not eating, so you hand feed her.
you just need to leave her the bowl of plain dog food and not give in. a healthy dog will not starve itself. she will eat when she gets hungry and you ned to be strong enough to not rush down to the floor and hold each kibble for her to nibble from your hand.
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I think you may have misunderstood me, I don't hand feed her. I only give her one piece of the food and she will eat that and that's all (she will only eat it if it is 'real' meat. She won't eat dry biscuits from my hand). I don't sit down upon the floor and feed every bit of food to her like a baby.
She will eat the beef and that's it (mainly). When she's eating this diet, she does not have upset stomach or vomitting and she has high energy. She won't eat the biscuits. When I do leave dry biscuits down, she will literally not eat for about 2 weeks. How long can a corgi go without eating? When she does that, I walk her and she can hardly keep up, she practically collapses. So that's why I changed her to fish because I seriously thought I was killing her by starvation from just keeping down dry biscuits. She doesn't get any leftovers from our plate or anything like that. Since she won't eat the beef most of the time and just being finicky and wanting more, how could she possibly want something else? How does she know if there is something better out there? I'm scared to leave dry biscuits down for her, she just reached 19 pounds and she's 15 months old. When she was younger, she only weight around 12 lbs when she was around 6-8 months old. I don't want her to be that skinny again. I could literally wrap my fingers with more room to spare around her waist. Do you think I should just give her dry biscuits and if she doesn't eat them, pick them up? And continue that until she does it?
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Permalink Reply by Mochi The Corgi on
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Wow I didn't know how much Eowyn and Mochi were so much a like in looks and in personality!! Mochi had a hard time eating too. But she would take treats. We ended up doing like how other people suggested the timed 30 min schedule. She is slowly getting the idea, when we put the the kibble she will eat (with some coaxing).
We went from the low end food to high end food, from all the switching. We feed Evo red bites now. Which seem to be pretty tasty she will tolerate it.
When we did the timed scheduled thing we made sure not to give any extra calorie items, chew things, or treats.
But i totally know how you feel! because we tried everything that eveyone suggested, changing food, adding things, ect. But we created a Monster really that just wanted something different every time we changed it because she knew that if she didn't eat it the next time for feeding we would change it to something else!
Now we don't add anything, just feed the dry kibble. But still working on it.
When we left her with my parents for 2 days, she didn't eat for a day. When she got back home, and back to the normal schedule, she gobbled up the food right away.
I think for Mochi anyway, she needed to know that we were in control of her food, we were the food providers. That she couldn't control us by not eating, thus demanding something else to be added.
We had a trainer before explain to us that since corgi's by narture are herding dogs, they are used to manipulating live creatures (IE us Humans) They will find any aspect in their lives to try to maintian that instictual manipulating behavior. ( ie not eating = controlling my human to give me something better to eat next time)
That was the case with Mochi anyways.
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