i picked up my new lab pup on wednesday. The breeder was feeding eukanuba (hmmmm.........i'd quite like to feed it to the dimwits who work in the testing area........), and mixing it with tripe. As in tripe tripe. Not this frozen stuff from pets at home. I'm not touching that stuff! He threw up in the car on the way home, and despite washing the vetbed from the boot, the car still honks of it!!!!!

anyhoo, i've tried giving it dry, soaking slightly, drenching, using water that chicken has been boiled in etc, but little pup likes it about as much as i like proctor and gamble, but thats besides the point.

anybody got any ideas of how to encourage him to eat it? I don't want to go switching too soon, although he's going on arden grange. I've added a spoonful of mackerel, tuna, sardines, scrambled egg, boiled chicken, minced beef, chopped hot dogs, grated cheese.....but he picks the nice bits out and leaves the euk! I left is as kibble only yesterday, but out of the four meals that were put down, he ate the equivalent of 1. He's got a fair tum on him so i'm not worried about the weight, but i don't want to keep adding things and having a faddy eater because of it. My other dog just ate burns puppy slightly soaked at his age.....

should i just put his meal down, and if he doesn't eat it in say 15 mins, take it away? I've done this twice today, and its made no difference. Or should i get some arden puppy and start putting a little bit it gradually changing it. I didn't want to do it too early, but not so sure.

any ideas anyone? Thanks,

nic

To be honest although peeps say switch slowly -if he's not eating it then theres nothing to switch from ! and the longer he goes on getting tasty titbits the fussier he'll become -if he were mine I'd just switch him and cut down on the tasty bits ;)

think i'm in agreement. I need to go buy some for dog number 2, so i'll get some arden puppy too.

my dogs eat better than me!!

It's more likely that as your puppy no longer has competition over meals now from his littermates that he's less keen - after all he's had a lot of huge changes in the past few days to cope with!  Any puppy or adult for that matter who goes off their food will be likely tempted by more treat-type morsels so don't be fooled by that scenario ;)

As the other poster said, if he's not been eating the Eukanuba now anyway then adding Arden Grange to his diet isn't likely to make a huge difference but he's still likely to prefer the other goodies you've been giving him.  I'd try offering him tiny pieces of AG as a treat little and often for a couple of days so that hopefully he views it as more appealing than just plain old staple diet.  He is a Lab after all - not known to starve themselves for long :P

Good luck, Teri :)