Eukanuba?

ORIGINAL: redlegos

I've heard that same thing. Also on Royal Canin's website, for the Chi food it says this;

The Chihuahua is especially demanding because its sense of smell is less well-developed than that of a larger breed dog - the small area of olfactory membranes means that it has fewer receptor cells.

Aha! So there is something to it. Really does make sense.

Anyway, I think it wouldn't hurt to feed all of your dogs the reduced calorie for a week and then pick up the regular Natural Balance.

Okay, thanks so much for your fast reply. I'm just really glad Pedro is eating. He ate almost all of this food ..there's just a tiny bit left. It's nothing like when he was on TWO. []

My comment was not intended to be smug.  Simply factual.  And I apologize to anyone who took it as smug or as critical.
 
In all the dogs I've had, I have never had a picky eater.  Big, small, pure or mixed breeds, never had one.  And I never had to starve any of them either.  I doubt that I just "got lucky" that many times, so maybe it comes down to attitude and expectations??  And this could extend all the way back to when I was a child.  We ate what was put on the table and if it was something we didn't like, we STILL ate it (after all, with all those starving children in China........I heard that one many times). DH's mom would get up from the table and make him something ELSE or put ice cream in the cream of wheat so he'd eat it.......that didn't happen in my family and I guess my attitudes extended to MY kids and my dogs.  I certainly never deliberately prepared something that I knew they would hate, but I also never played short order cook.
 
But, I've never had picky eaters, human or canine.  And perhaps its nothing more than MY expectations that all would eat.
 
That is NOT meant to be a smug statement, nor is it meant to say anyone caused their dog to be a picky eater.  It's simply a statement of fact.  And, I honestly don't understand all these dogs who ARE picky eaters.  Something, somewhere, somehow has interferred with the dogs natural instinct to survive, be it breeding, be it pandering, be it, whatever.  Healthy dogs will eat because they have the instinct to survive.  Unless something has suppressed that instinct.

Well, Glenda you can say "cause" a dog to be picky.  But, then at some point it gets beyond that and it becomes a health and behavior issue for them. 

ORIGINAL: Luvntzus

I heard one theory on why little dogs are more often picky eaters. It was that small dogs have fewer scent receptors (due to the smaller surface area of the nose) and therefore not as keen sense of smell. I don't know how much truth there is to it, but since dogs go mostly by smell rather than taste, it made sense to me.

I'm not so sure about that theory, it certainly doesn't explain why my little dog is picky.  She is a dachshund, a hound, bred to have an enhanced sense of smell, and she will walk away from a bowl of kibble she doesn't like.  I also can't find an independent source of that information, only on the Royal Canin website.  My theory is that small breed dogs by nature tend to be more stubborn and less willing to please their owners than larger "working" breeds and that is why they have us trained to go crazy finding them different foods.

I'm glad your dog is eating the Natural Balance []  That one is a hit in my house too.

Lori, I don't recall saying that anyone "caused" their dogs to be picky eaters.  Not this thread anyway.  I'm not trying to cause a fight.

Glenda, you were raised like me--we ate what was on the table or did without.  We were poor and didn't eat 'fine foods' (lots of beans and cornbread fresh or fresh canned/frozen home grown veggies, wild game, our own killed hickens, a hog every couple of years, calf every couple of years, etc.  Raised our boys the same way.  Would make them so mad when we would have company with picky eater kids and the kids would be told to eat supper, or no dessert or anything else later.  kids wouldn't eat and would end up with dessert and bowl of cereal or othr snack before going to bed. Oldest married one who didn't eat many veggies and he put up such a fuss about their kids were going to eat properly that she started eating soemthing other than corn and poatoes and now enjoys even broccolli, spinach, etc, as do the kids. 
 
Like you, i didn't think i was being smug, i was just telling it like it was.  We never had a picky eater.  Well, maybe you could have  called hunter a picky eater.  You could drop a potato chip, a hersey kiss, etc on the floor and he would smell it and walk away.  But he never refused his kibble.  At least he was picky at the right stuff, LOL, unlike my others that would eat most anything dropped.
 
Until i read what Jenns wrote about the hound's sniffer, i had not thought of that either...at least for scent hounds.  May not be accurate for sight hound.  It would have be true of bird dogs--finding a downed quail in an huge field.  I guess it would stand to reason that dogs that use eyes most (sight hounds) would probably have better vision.  Dogs that use their noses (bird dogs, scent hound) would have better sense of smell.
 
And i agree with Glenda about something having happen to dogs if they are willing to starve themselves to death.  Stray dogs, wild dogs, etc eat any and everything they can to survive.  I remember one that was rescued on Animal Planet's Animal Cops that had been eating cardboard as that was the only thing to eat. 
 
But for some reason it appears some dogs today are willing to die rather than eat something they don't like or dont' ike the smell of etc.  Something has happened to their survival instanct.  I don't know what it is and why it appears to be mostly small dogs---most of them couldn't survife in the wild anyway as bigger dogs would always get the first dibbs...may even eat them. 
 
I find this all very interesting.  Why did some dogs lose their survival instinct?

ORIGINAL: glenmar

In all the dogs I've had, I have never had a picky eater.  Big, small, pure or mixed breeds, never had one.  And I never had to starve any of them either.  I doubt that I just "got lucky" that many times, so maybe it comes down to attitude and expectations?? 

It's not just expectations. When I went the tough love route for months with Gingerbread, I expected him to eat the food I put down. I didn't doctor up his food or play short order cook. And he DID eat, but just barely enough and he was underweight.

Edited because I haven't been awake long enough to be posting. []

Well I know that sighthounds, including italian greyhounds, are some of the first breeds to turn feral when out in the wild, and in fact if they've been gone for awhile and then returned to their families, it takes them awhile to come out of that feral state. Since iggies are a toy breed i don't think his picky eating habits have anything to do with having less of a survival instinct. My dog may be small, but he's all speed and prey drive. I have noticed this with my dog, that when the kibble doesn't contain very many fresh meat sources he is less apt to eat it. For example, he hates Canidae-no fresh meat. He eats Innova ok-some fresh meat. He's enjoyed eating Wysong-all fresh meat. Also if there are too many grains in the food, he won't eat it either. He hated Chicken Soup I believe for this reason (just my suspicion that Chicken Soup has too many grains). He adores cat food, which is supposedly more acidic tasting than dog food, which is normally sweeter, so there may be something to the palate of toy breeds being different from larger breeds. I don't know, just a thought.

Well, all my life I've never had a picky dog, UP UNTIL 3 years ago.  And now I have TWO.  Both are large dogs - a Dane and a GSD. So much for the toy breed theory! The two Pugs, of course, are as far from picky as a dog can get.  (Anyone who has a Pug can attest to that, LOL).  I'm lucky to get the GSD to eat 3 cups of dry food (with a bit of canned mixed in) a day, and the Dane will often turn his nose up at treats.  Pig ears,  no less!  He does like Canidae and Chicken Soup so we stick with that.  The GSD will eat the Purina Naturally Complete that we recently got for her, somewhat. But both dogs MUST have some canned mixed in or they will merely pick at their food.  I've always had hearty eaters in the past, so this is a totally strange experience for me.  And I've never coddled my dogs about eating, or encouraged them in any way. I just set the food bowls down, and pick them up again 15 minutes later.  So I'm doing nothing different from what I've always done with my dogs.  So sometimes I think it just happens.  Some people are more "into" food, and the same with dogs.

ORIGINAL: jenns

ORIGINAL: Luvntzus

I heard one theory on why little dogs are more often picky eaters. It was that small dogs have fewer scent receptors (due to the smaller surface area of the nose) and therefore not as keen sense of smell. I don't know how much truth there is to it, but since dogs go mostly by smell rather than taste, it made sense to me.

I'm not so sure about that theory, it certainly doesn't explain why my little dog is picky.  She is a dachshund, a hound, bred to have an enhanced sense of smell, and she will walk away from a bowl of kibble she doesn't like.  I also can't find an independent source of that information, only on the Royal Canin website.  My theory is that small breed dogs by nature tend to be more stubborn and less willing to please their owners than larger "working" breeds and that is why they have us trained to go crazy finding them different foods.

I'm glad your dog is eating the Natural Balance []  That one is a hit in my house too.

I know that long-nosed dogs like collies are more prone to nasal cancers, supposedly due to the increased surface area, so I don't see why it couldn't work in reverse as well... some breeds were built for hunting (like dachsunds) and others were not, and selective breeding will certainly play a role in their ability to scent as well.

ORIGINAL: sooner

ORIGINAL: Luvntzus

ORIGINAL: papillon806

I actually like Eukanuba the best (the majority of the formulas) compared to it's competitors in the "big chain" stores like Petco and PetSmart.

I agree except that Petsmart has started carrying ByNature Organics and Avoderm. I think both of those are superior to Eukanuba.

By Nature and Avoderm aren't available at all Petsmarts yet. I haven't seen any sign of them in any of the five stores in Oklahoma City.

 
I gave my mom 5 $5 off coupons for By Nature Organics, thinking that it would be in her Pet Smart.  Nope. 

ORIGINAL: glenmar

Am I the ONLY one on the face of the planet whose dogs eat what they are given, WHEN they are given it?  They *might* turn their noses up at something like P[:'(]digr[:'(][:'(], but they would do so knowing that they weren't gonna get fed until the next time to eat, so not likely.

I've been told that GSD's are picky eaters with sensitive tummies.  Not so much here.

Maybe it's in the way you feed it. Or because you have lots of dogs.  I still think age has alot to do with it.  Joey was fussy from 6 months to 2 years.  I know lots of other people - mostly customers of the store I used to work at - that had fussy dogs between 6 months to 2 years.  I'm serious. 

I don't really think so.  The dogs are fed in their crates so there is no competition for their food.  Sheba and Tyler pretty regularly eat in the kitchen but neither is a chow hog so no issues there.  Sheba WILL sometimes decide she doesn't want breakfast, and I simply pick the bowl up and put it away when that happens.  It's rare that she doesn't eat, but I figure she's just not hungry when she does that since she gets nothing 'til dinner time.  I don't think we do anything any differently from most folks....we fill the bowls and distribute them  And, believe it or not, there HAVE been times that we were a one dog family [] and I didn't have picky eaters then either.  I guess I just have enough of a no-nonsense attitude that kids and dogs just give up on being picky and eat???
 
I don't dispute that some dogs are just picky.  In MOST cases, I think that picky eating IS encouraged by the way that owners handle the fledgling pickiness.  But, that's just my opinion.