Getting Fussier by the day

  Love your avatar; very cute picture!  No, you don't have to cater to them; it just makes them fussier. The best thing to do is feed them at scheduled times rather than leaving the food out all the time. Put the food out for awhile, maybe 10 to 15 minutes, and then take it back up. You don't need to mix anything in it. They will soon learn to eat their food when its offered without the fancy add- ins. I do wonder about Pella though; older dogs ( well even young dogs) can have bad teeth, which makes eating painful. Has a vet checked her teeth recently? Dry isn't necessarily better; canned food is less processed, but it's more expensive to feed.

jessies_mom

  Love your avatar; very cute picture!  No, you don't have to cater to them; it just makes them fussier. The best thing to do is feed them at scheduled times rather than leaving the food out all the time. Put the food out for awhile, maybe 10 to 15 minutes, and then take it back up. You don't need to mix anything in it. They will soon learn to eat their food when its offered without the fancy add- ins. I do wonder about Pella though; older dogs ( well even young dogs) can have bad teeth, which makes eating painful. Has a vet checked her teeth recently? Dry isn't necessarily better; canned food is less processed, but it's more expensive to feed.

I've got nothing to add to the above advice.  Ditto everything she said.

Well, here we are a month later, same story.  But in the meantime I had Abby's teeth checked, they are fine so she has no chewing problems.

I have tried giving them food and leaving it and then taking it away.  If Abby misses two meals she will puke yellow bile by morning, and I am sure that is because her tummy is so empty.  Saturday morning she was laying on my lap, and again would not touch what I gave her to eat, and as she laid there I could her her tummy just growling with hunger pains.

My DH got up, looked over the situation, and then took a spoon and stired some warm water into her dish, and she ate it.

We have tried this agian and it worked.  Could it be that she just thinks more attention needs to be paid to her food, like she thinks she is getting something so much better, but really isn't.  I can't let her skip meals, becasue she will get sick before she thinks to eat.  I think she is above eating anything that is just dumped in her dish, she needs to see it like prepared or something, even if it is just a stir of a spoon.  How silly is that, and what a pain.

goatman68

Could it be that she just thinks more attention needs to be paid to her food, like she thinks she is getting something so much better, but really isn't. 

  Probably not; we tend to attribute too many human traits to dogs. There are a lot of reasons for a dog not to eat. Kidney and liver disease affects a dogs appetite. For years, Jessie would frequently skip her morning meal but eat her dinner (we thought she was being fussy), and she would vomit occasionally. Then she had a pancreatitis attack 3 years ago. I learned that skipping some of her meals and occasional vomiting were symptoms of low grade chronic pancreatitis and it's likely that she had it years before it progressed enough to cause a serious attack. She actually eats a lot better than she used to, now that we keep her on a low fat food. By the way; when dogs have pancreatitis, their stomach makes growling noises, so stomach noises don't necessarily mean your dog is hungry. If she's had recent blood work and you're certain she's healthy, I'd just add the warm water to her food and not worry.

 only thing I would add is that sometimes older dogs start losing their sense of smell - dogs don't taste much but their nose tells them what is yummy - she may need something stronger scented to attract her to eating

I agree with all that has been said.  I also think keep up with the warm water.

And also, are they getting enough exercise to really work up a good appetite?  How about a nice long walk, good ball throwing session each day, something to make them burn some calories and work up that appetite.

Also, if you are worrying while prepearing their food ("are they going to eat this or not?";) they will think there is something about that food to worry about.

Good luck

Thank you shamrockmommy.  I try to be very matter of fact about feeding time.  I held my ground last night and she finally ate to 7pm, so she went 24 hours without any food. And she ate breakfast today.

I know people say dogs can't reason or plot, but I think they know enough to play their owners. Abby is an eye contact dog, she will look at something and then look at you and keep doing this until you catch on. And she does it with her food dish too. Just cracks me up.  They are smart little creatures.

She is just  a fussy eater, so I will get over it. Or give in.  LOL

goatman68

Thank you shamrockmommy.  I try to be very matter of fact about feeding time.  I held my ground last night and she finally ate to 7pm, so she went 24 hours without any food. And she ate breakfast today.

I know people say dogs can't reason or plot, but I think they know enough to play their owners. Abby is an eye contact dog, she will look at something and then look at you and keep doing this until you catch on. And she does it with her food dish too. Just cracks me up.  They are smart little creatures.

She is just  a fussy eater, so I will get over it. Or give in.  LOL

It  may not necessarily be that she is playing you, but it could be the variation in the routine. If she's used to you doing something before you feed her, she may basically think that thing has to occur in order for her to be able to eat. One the trainers at a place we go to told us once of a dog who wouldn't eat while it was staying in the kennel. After it didn't eat the second meal, they called the owners because they were concerned. I think they eventually figured it out, and the owners didn't have to leave their trip early, or the dog wasn't transferred to the vet, that at home, the owners always made the dog sit for the food, and said some word to release him to eat. As soon as the kennel staff had the dog sit and said the release word, the dog scarfed down the food. I always make Luke sit until I set down his food, and I say okay when he can have it. If we're downstairs, I usually set his food down on a certain big bed. The other day, I put his food in front of the bed, because I had it in a certain toy, and he would not eat. He just sat there staring at it. Anyway, it might just be the piece of your routine she is looking for. It's a totally arbitrary thing, but dogs can be like that. You could keep putting a little water on her food, there's no harm there. Of course, if she doesn't eat it, then I don't know if you would want to save it for later like you could if it were just dry. You could also try, and this is just more to see if this is it, taking a spoon and mixing the plain dry food around prior to giving it to your dog. You could always continue to do that prior to feeding it to her if you wanted to and that solved the problem, but I would probably choose to stop doing that (because it's the type of little detail you're likely to forget to tell someone if they are watching your dog). If that is the case, I would just set the food down with no fanfare as has been suggested, and she should eventually learn that it's  okay to eat it even you don't do that. Again, I'm just throwing out a guess there with that one, but such a thing is not unheard of.