Is your dog really a picky eater, or is it something simpler?
Quiet observation around two dogs can teach you a lot about each dog's behavior
When my parents asked me to dogsit their Shih Tzu mix while they were out of town, my automatic answer was “yes.” Mind you, their dog is small with a huge personality. I laughed when they said they wouldn’t blame me if I had her suitcase* packed and was standing outside before they arrived to pick her up.
Let’s just say the first Thanksgiving with my Hound mix (Junee) and their dog (Jackie) was entertaining. While I’ve dogsat numerous colorful personalities and was prepared for anything, I think my parents were startled by the level of energy between a puppy and a dog who hadn’t yet made it to her second birthday.
Besides Zoomies, one of the primary issues between the two dogs was how adamant they were about eating each others’ foods. Although puppies are supposed to eat puppy food — which reportedly has more protein and fat for growth, as well as nutrients like Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, an omega fatty acid found in mother's milk) — Jackie was gunning for Junee’s food. Although Junee liked her own food, she was curious about the different smell of Jackie’s wet food. (I only feed her dry after testing out several dog food ingredients and finding out how surprisingly sensitive her stomach is.)
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I was prepared for this to happen during dogsitting, so I pulled out a baby gate that I hadn’t used since Junee’s adoption year. I never fed Jackie and Junee in the same room. But then I had a new problem. Jackie just flat-out refused to eat at all if she couldn’t eat Junee’s food. And I realized I was going to have one skinny dog on my hands if she didn’t eat for a week! My mother had already warned me that Jackie “doesn’t eat anything half the time,” but that couldn’t have been totally true — because she was always pacing near the gate while Junee ate.
Something told me it had to be more than just the taste of puppy food versus adult dog food. My mother fed her by hand after she was spayed, but I was not about to spoon-feed this dog for seven days. I tried putting her wet food in one dish and her dry food in another, thinking maybe she just liked one more than the other. She stared at them both and walked away. I knew if I put her and Junee in the same room, Junee was going to eat her own food and Jackie’s, then lick the bowl clean. So I put Jackie in the kitchen by herself and did my morning Pilates, hoping she’d eventually eat. Jackie whined for a bit but realized I wasn’t budging.
I smiled while exercising, as soon as I heard a bunch of clapping and tapping noises like someone with a spoon against a wine glass. That’s how I knew she was eating; her tags were clapping against the pink glass dishes. I poked my head in and smiled. She finished one of the dishes (the wet food) but not the other.
Wait. What? If she doesn’t like dry dog food, then why was she forever sneaking a mouthful of Junee’s dry food from her dish? And why was it never tough to get her to eat out of Junee’s larger dish? My parents and I never knew when she was in Junee’s dish because it was two times the size of her head, and we couldn’t hear her reach inside.
Then it hit me. That may be the problem — and the solution.
