My puppy wont eat dry food

    • Silver

    My puppy wont eat dry food

    I've been having a very hard time getting my 11 month old puppy to eat dry food. I've tried Innova, Evo, Solid Gold, Artemis, and Nutro and he doesnt like them. I've resorted to canned food but his stool isnt nice and firm. I've went as far as mixing the wet and dry together but he pushes the dry out of his bowl and goes straight for the wet food.
     
    Any advice?
    • Gold Top Dog
    You could try softening the wet food.  Just add some warm water and let it set to soften up.  I did this for my lab for a while when she was a puppy...first so it was easier for her to eat it then second because she began eating so fast she would throw the dry up...  Adding water for a while cured that issue.  If you switch the food too often your pup may get very finicky so try just using one of the premium puppy foods for a while.  He may not want to eat for a meal or two but the pup is not going to starve himself...he will eat when he gets hungry enough.  If it worries you give some homecooked in between.
    • Gold Top Dog
    BTW...I don't know your financial situation but canned is always better than dry if you can afford to keep them on it.  Regular dentals will be necessary unless you begin doing the raw diet that many do on here....before you switch to something like that...be SUUURE you know EVERYTHING that you are doing!!  An incomplete raw or homecooked diet can have disasterous effects.
    • Gold Top Dog
    well, if you really want to feed dry food, your only option is "tough love". Put down your chosen dry food, wait 15 minutes, pick it up. Repeat until he eats it. Don't worry if he choses not to eat for several days, it won't hurt him.
    Dry food is really not the best choice for a dog, and dogs know it. Most dogs in my experience dislike dry kibbles of any type and only eat them out of intense hunger and lack of anything better. Wet foods, especially a variety of fresh wet foods, are much better for dogs. If I were you I'd look into feeding a quality canned diet, or home-cooked or raw.  I personally never even try to feed dry kibble by itself due to fears of bloat. I always mix it half and half with wet foods, usually home-cooked stew or raw diet ground up. If you mix it well it's quite difficult for dogs to only eat the wet food.
    Just feeding a wet diet should not cause diarrhea. If the pup has loose stools on one particular brand of canned food, try switching brands.
    • Gold Top Dog
    Have you mentioned this to your vet? Could it be possible that your dog's teeth are giving him a problem?
     
    Are you allowing the food to sit even if he doesn't eat or do you find something else to make yourself feel comfortable that your dog is eating?
     
    I have a male who will hold out if I give in, if I let his food sit there he will give in and eat it...pretty much they train us, because we want them to eat, to give them something else that we think they will like.
     
    I'm not very fond of a full diet of canned food personally. I would attempt to leave the food down two days before changing if you haven't already done this. If you have and he still isn't eating kibble, I would look for other reasons why such as teeth and digestive issues
     
    Keep us posted!
    • Gold Top Dog
    Ugh. . .this is always such a pain.  Willow will really only eat kibble every so often.  So, I finally decided to feed her canned and homecooked.  Maybe you could try a plain canned like California Natural, something less rich.  The foods you've tried are nice but they have lots of ingredients and that may just be too much for him at this age. 
    • Gold Top Dog
    Actually lori, in my case the California Natural canned food was too rich for my girl (mixed with her kibble) and it gave her nasty diarrhea. Don't know if that was because it was a canned food or because it had chicken in it.
    Every dog is different though.
    I've fed her NB duck and potato canned and her poop was a little soft, but not nearly as bad.
    From what I've heard, canned food is actually really good for them because the kibbles are dehydrated, so they need to compensate by drinking a lot of water- a lot of dogs don't redily drink (minus the water-dogs!) so the canned food adds a little moisture to their diet.
     
     
    • Gold Top Dog
    Well, she'll probably have to switch around to see what works for her.  They are also making a fish and sweet potato now too. 
     
    Yes, there is a huge difference in Willow's water intake when she's eating kibble.  I forgot this most recent time and started to panic about why she was drinking so much water!
    • Gold Top Dog
     Have you ever gone camping and tried to live on nothing but dried jerkey, dried fruits, etc.?  boy, do you need to drink. And when the stuff swells up in your stomach, super belly aches. Can't be good for you. Or your dog.
    • Gold Top Dog
    I'm curious,,,I never heard anything about the fact that there is less danger of bloat by feeding canned dog food over kibble.  Having a dog thats breed is subject to bloat I have read a lot of things about it, but I have never read where if you feed canned food they won't bloat.
     
    The suggestion of using warm water above made me think of an article writtin by Great Dane Lady, Linda Arndt who says:
    Do not microwave, soak or use hot or very warm water on your kibble. It will destroy the integrity of the friendly yogurt type cultures and the fragile vitamins/minerals and amino acids on the food.
    • Gold Top Dog
    Dyan--I don't know all that much about it but I always thought if the food couldn't swell up inside them that that would reduce the chances of them having bloat. 
    • Gold Top Dog
    there's a strong correlation between bloat and dogs fed exclusively on dry kibble. Most bloat is clearly linked to stress. I think feeding dry meals, particularly large dry meals, is stressful to the digestive system. Most of the time the dog can deal with it. But add some extra stress, and whoops. All the dogs I have personally known to bloat were fed their entire lives on one brand of dry kibble, and the bloat incident occurred during or shortly after a very stressful incident, like owners away on vacation or a move to a new house.
    • Gold Top Dog
    Oh crap mudpuppy.  I'm moving again soon.  Dang it.  Most of my crew have eaten Innova all their life along with homecooked or raw and all have moved at least once.  Think we're safe?
    • Gold Top Dog
    why moving again? I thought you had a lovely place.
    • Gold Top Dog
    Gosh Mudpuppy,  I read everything I could read about bloat, and have much of it saved. I have read people say they thought raw helped to prevent bloat but honestly raw people say that about everything anyway (sorry, didn't mean that to make a negative or derogatory statement if it sounded like it) and I have read that grained based diets seemed to ferment and cause bloat, but I have not read that canned verses kibble idea.  I wonder if you could remember where you read/heard that?  I sure have read a lot about stress and bloat, and yes, dogs bloating after a stressful event, but I also read somewhere (don't ask where anymore  lol) that while we look for bloat after they eat, its not true because more dogs bloat in the middle of the night, or early in the morning.  
    As I said, having a breed that is subject to bloat, I am interested in any statement made about the disease.