Sunday, November 9, 2014

Eating Disorder?

Is there such thing as "Eating Disorders" for dogs? My dog, Peewee, has always seemed to have a problem when it comes to eating his food. He REFUSES to eat his dog food unless someone is out there with him while he eats. Now, when my dog was a puppy, he had an incident where he chocked on a bone that he had chewed down to a very small stump. He always had the eating problem before, but it dramatically increased after that incident. So I began taking his eating problem as a fear of chocking again. But after a while, he began eating human food again without being supervised, and continued to refuse his dog food. We tried pretty much every brand of dog food. He'd somewhat eat it for a day or two, and then completely stop. We decided we'd try switching to wet dog food instead of dry dog food like we had been trying. He ate it. But, not very far into the road we noticed he began developing tummy aches from these wet dog foods, so we had to stop giving him them. He continued to refuse his dry dog food. It freaked us out that he was barely eating. We didn't want him to lose weight and get sick or unhealthy. So my dad decided we'll start buying him cooked chicken and feeding him that with rice. He thought that since dog food claims to have "real chicken" and some of his wet dog foods contained rice and he seemed to like it, that it was fine to feed him. He LOVED it, like any other dog would. But we knew he wasn't getting the nutrients he would normally get from normal dog food. We continued to search for dog food. 
Recently we found this dog food called "Come and Get it: Cookout Classic" by Purina. He'e been eating it for about a week now. But I fear that being his second week eating this food, he is going to start to refuse it again. We bought some treats to feed to him after he finished a bowl of food, for motivation. We're hoping it works, but I don't want to get my hopes up. 
I put this eating problem out here to see if anyone else has experienced this. We tried a lot of different methods, which included different food brands, different "textured" foods, and even tried a more extreme method of putting out his food, and if he didn't touch it within 20 minutes, taking it away, and returning it 10 minutes later, and repeated this until he'd eat. None of these worked. So if any one has experienced this before, and got past it, please let me know how and what you did! I really love my dog and i don't want him to become unhealthy. 

1 comment:

  1. Oh my goodness, maybe it a Cocker Spaniel thing. My mom has a Cocker who acts exactly the same way. Penny (my mom's dog) won't eat for anyone but my mom and even then she only occasionally eats. My mom cooks special meals for Penny and has tried every kind of food and treat. I hope other people respond. I would love answers.

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