Hi

I posted earlier in the week about changing my Westie over to JWB from Eukanuba as he was not eating the biscuits since we went to the adult biscuit as the kibbles were a lot larger. On Monday i went over and got some JWB the turkey and rice kibble and he went mad for these so i thought great i have found a smaller biscuit that he likes, he ate the food Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and was eating the JWb and leaving the Eukanbua in the bowl, but yesterday he decided not to eat any of the biscuits at all, he looked in the bowl and looked at me as if to say i don't want these anymore, i am now in a difficult position because he won't eat the JWB and he doesn't want the Eukanuba either, last night he picked the chicken out of the bowl and left all of the biscuits, so this morning i put the biscuits down again for breakfast and he has not eaten anything, should i just leave him to get hungry and make him eat them, he will eat other treats but i feel if he cannot eat his dinner he shouldn't have anything else but i am not sure whether i should do this or not, how long can a dog starve for before it will make him ill, i don't want to change to another food as i feel he was eating this earlier in the week so why won't he know, he has not had an upset stomach or anything so i would just like anybody's advice as to what i should do with him, should i just let him get on with it and make him eat it eventually or should i give him a treat?

Thanks
Helen

Have you tried soaking the biscuits?  I had a similar problem with my cocker spaniel a couple of months ago, but when I soaked his biscuits in water (or gravy) he ate them immedietely.  It could be his teeth/gums are hurting him.

Jax :)

Hi

Yes i have tried soaking them but he just turns his nose up and walks away, i just cannot understand why Monday,Tuesday.Wednesday he was eating them dry and now he just doesn't want them, any ideas!

Helen

I am confused here..

JWB and Eukanuba are Complete foods are you adding the chicken to that??

If I gave my husband the choice of Steak or Cornbeef on his plate everynight I know which he would eat and what he would leave.

Sounds like the dog has you wound round his finger or paw :-)

Should you give him a treat NO !!!!

If you want him to eat the complete then only put the compete down. You should not be adding anything to the complete.

Good luck

Hi

I have always added chicken to his biscuits ever since he was a puppy, the breeder said when i got him at 8 weeks to add some cooked chicken to them. I just cannot understand why he started to eat them dry but now he just doesn't want them, he just sniffs them and looks as if to say i don't want them and then walks away. I have tried soaking them like the other person said but he does not want them then either, so i am going to just leave them dry and see what happens, i was just concerned that if he didn't eat for too long that it could do him some harm, i am not that up with dogs as this is my first dog and am not sure really what to do with him. I think he is just being awkward as the vet checked his mouth when he went for his booster and he said he was fine so there cannot be anything wrong with his teeth. All he seems to be doing today is just wondering around feeling sorry for himself.
I am just wanting some advice as to what other people would do in my situation.

Thanks
Helen

Hi, if I was in that situation and I was SURE  my dog was well (no sign of temperature/sickness etc) I would persevere with the JWB he liked earlier in the week. I would put a small amount in his bowl on the worksurface and let him watch as I pretend to eat signaling it was good enough for me the leader to eat...no fuss just quietly. I would then put the bowl down for about five minutes and walk away..don't watch or fuss. If he did not eat I would remove the dish without fuss or comment and try again later..no treats. If this did not work and the dog would not eat after two days I would feed meat or fish with rice and reintroduce the dry food later. I think your dog may be trying it on and holding out to get something better,if I was him and could get away with it I would try wouldn't you? :-D

i had the same problems with my 2 eating it but, i confess that i ended up after soaking it i add a small tin of Tesco's sardines in oil between them, its not a lot of extra food to add as its 1 tin betweent the 2 of them and its only 30p a tin and the oil is good for their coats, or now and again i add a raw egg too.

Michelle

Helen,

Dogs are smart little cookies I can tell you. I have 4.

I have had one fussy one through spoiling , never again. 

Thing is I bet your dog is fit as a fiddle and is not under weight. They take what they want from the food also.

I would stick at it and only put down the complete with a little water.

If mine don't eat there food I lift it and they wait till next feed. It generally works.

Good luck.

Hi All

Just to update you all on how Hamish is doing with his food, thank you to everyone that has posted about this i am very grateful for your replies. Hamish stuck it out until last night when he finally ate the bowl of JWB biscuits after 2 days of starving himself, so after he cleared his bowl i made a HUGE fuss of him and gave him a piece of chicken as a treat. This morning i put his biscuits down but up until now he has refused them so i am just going to stick it out again until he eats them and then give him a treat so that he knows that when he clears his biscuits he can have some chicken as a treat but if he does not eat them he goes hungry, he keeps sitting by the door where his treats are kept in the kitchen but i just tell him no until you eat your biscuits you cannot have anything else, i think it will take a while but he will cotton on in the end, i am going to be as stubborn as he is over this because if i give in to him he will rule me and i am not going to let this happen.
I was just concerned that if he went too long without eating that he would make himself bad but after hearing other dogs have done this with their food i am not worried anymore, i now feel that if he gets too hungry he will have to give in and eat them. I will keep you all updated with his progress.

Thanks again
Helen and Hamish (the stubborn westie)

Hi, over the couple of years I have had my dog, I have tried a few different complete foods.  She always seems keen on them at first (or when I mix something with it), but after a short while, like your dog, she doesn't want to know.  However, I just put it down for her morning and evening and when she is hungry she will eat it.  Given the choice though of her dinner or ANYTHING else, she would always leave her complete.  I think, when your dog realises he is not getting anything else, he will eat it, he wont stay hungry for very long.

Fiona

By the way, Saffy often doesn't touch her breakfast, but only leaves her dinner if she has had a lot of snacks/other food before it. Unfortunately, I can't say she enjoys her food, but that does help keep her slim!

I went through this exact same problem when Millie was on Pedigree but fortunately the change to JWB worked a treat.  I had been adamant that I wouldn't get in the habit of adding stuff to her food to tempt her, but I do often do this now - if I'm having a tuna sandwich, I'll put a few very small bits of tuna on her food, for example.  i also bought 'dog gravy' from sainsburys and might occasionally put a tiny squirt on.  Just the smell of something interesting sends her over to her food and she tucks right in and cleans the bowl.  I also sometimes feed chicken (with mixer, not complete food) instead of a JWB meal, or something similar like tuna, to give her a bit of variety, but this week our car has been in the menders, and we haven't been shopping, so its been JWB all the way, twice a day every day and I've had no problems with her, she's tucked into every meal.  This doesn't help you I know, but I just want to sympathise because I've been there, in frustration when she wouldn't touch her food from the morning until 6pm or later when she realised she wasn't getting anything else.  Maybe he's just trying it on, holding out for something better.  I was advised not to give in if I thought this was to be the case, keep putting the food down, then picking it up if it was untouched - by nature dogs won't starve themselves and they will eat eventually, but you have to keep the possibility of the fact he really doesn't like it in mind.  I listened to some advice on here that he shouldn't have a preference and should be happy to eat whatever I put down, but then someone else came up with another point of view that dogs do have preferences and like to have variet too.  Since changing her off the pedigree about 7/8 weeks ago (omg millie is 7 months on Monday - where does the time go!) I've really noticed the difference.  I know you shouldn't change the food too often but at the same time, you'll be going nowhere slowly if he REALLY doesn't like it.  I would be suspicious that he just doesn't like dried food, whatever brand, wetted or not.  Are there other possibilities you would consider?  I know most people prefer dry food to wet, but there are people on here who do give their dog wet food.  Or what about home made food,  you already know he likes chicken, you could give him chicken one night, tuna the next etc etc (other people will have more ideas for you than me!).  Or Naturediet, I haven't seen this myself, but a lot of people recommend it and if I'm correct, I believe it is vaccum packed meat and veg.  You might find he tucks into something squidy and mushy as opposed to dry and crunchy!

Thinking further on that, my sisters Westie comes to visit often and we can put Millie's food down in the comfortable knowledge that he won't eat it for her when we're not looking.  There's NO WAY in the WORLD he would ever lower his standards so much as to eat something as degrading as 'dry food'!! :-D

Hi Helen

I feed my cocker spaniel Skinners Rough & Ready, it has chunks of dried meat in it and lots of different textures, my old dane also ate it with no problems.  They are pretty helpfull so i am sure they would advise you if it was suitable for your dog. They do a few different kinds :-P

http://www.skinnerspetfoods.co.uk/

I'm having the exact same problem as you at the moment!All of last week my dogs ate their dry food with no problems BUT this week refuse to touch it,i believe it is just boredom on their part,there is no question that eating is one of our dogs greatest joys and they certainly DO have preferences on what they like and do not like,your dog obviously does like jwb as he did enjoy eating it at one stage,so it's not a problem of him not liking it.One thing that has helped my dogs immensly to eat are the "greenies lil bits" Have you heard of the greenies chews?you can get greenie "shavings" which you sprinkle on their food,this will make my dogs eat every time :)
A couple days ago i put their dry food down,they had a sniff and walked away,they both went straight to their treat cupboard and started whining for a treat,it took all my strength not to give in to them,they carried on for 1 hour and then realised i was not going to give in(which was a change coz i always do and they end filling up on treats)and ended up eating all of their food,so in answer to you question of giving him a treat,i say definately NO!!In future he will know that if he doesnt eat his food you will give him a treat,believe me this a very,very hard habit to break.My dogs only get their treat if they finish all of their dinner,i think they are slowly cottoning on to this,because their visits to the treat cupboards are becoming less.When they finish their dinner i praise them heaps and then give them their treat STRAIGHT AWAY,so hopefully they will associate finishing their meal gets them a prized treat.
I rue the day that i let them dictate to me what they would or would not eat,if they turned their noses up at something i would quickly replace it with something better and then when they got sick of that i replaced it with something even better until eventually nothing was good enough for their fussy pallattes! The more you pander to them the harder they will make our lives.
Beleive me,Hamish will not starve himself,once he realises that nothing better is being offered,he will eat.It will take a long time to recondition him but if you stick to it he will eventually become  good eater,but you cant give in even once coz then you will be back to square one again and your hard work will be undone!

christine

Forgot to add,One thing i dont agree on is giving dogs the same thing for breakfast AND dinner,my dogs get dry for breakie and then a homecooked meat meal for dinner but if they dont eat their dry in the morning then they get it again in the evening but if they finish off their breakie then they get the meat for tea(hope i'm not confusing you) I also rotate between dry foods,i buy the small 5kilo bags and when they finish that then i change to a different brand,i rotate between 5 different brands,this is to ensure that they dont get bored with the same old dry food day in and day out and i'm sure our dogs appreciate variety as much as we do!
If you have any more questions i will be more than happy to help ;)

christine

oooh must investigate these 'greenies'!!!

I do the same as you christine, dry food for breakfast and meat for dinner, providing she's eaten her dry breakfast.

I also want to try that 'treat' immediately after dinner method - although I suspect it may not work to well as if you give Millie a treat after she's eaten a dinner, she usually buries it, but I may try this with a tiny piece of pro-liver.  Not because I need to bribe her to eat her dinner, but because I want to instill in her mind that she only gets treats when she's eaten her dinner - currently having a battle with OH who will walk in from work at 6.30pm and give her a chewstick or something, when she previously would have been hungry enough to eat her dinner, so consequently she won't touch her dinner for a few more hours - by which point he's then fed her bits from his own dinner, let her lick the plate when he thinks i'm not watching....grrrrr!  As we always say, its not training the dogs, its training the OH's! :-D  But I want to instill in him, that if she eats her dinner around 6.30pm, a) she will stop trying to climb on his lap when he's eating and b) he will be able to give her something nice much later on in the evening without getting a rollicking from me!

But anyway, Hamish75, I think you should investigate these greenies too for Hamish or a similar idea - often you just need a light smattering of something interesting to get their face in the bowl and then they don't stop till its clean :-)

I have a question!  Lots of you talk about rotating the flavours of a brand of food - can you do this then without all the 'introducing new food' malarky?  I've always stuck to the same flavour of a food, to avoid this, but is it okay to randomly swap between (for example) JWB lamb and JWB turkey without it having any adverse effect, and without having to do the extended gradual introduction palava?

I do it all the time.  I even switch between Burns and JWB occasionally without all the changing over stuff.  We've never had a problem, and I do have one that has a bit of a sensetive tummy.  I figure it gives them a bit of variety.

Wendy

Jess<<<introducing new food malarky>>> I think the gradual introduction thing only applies when changing all together from ordinary food to any of the complete dry foods, switching from one complete dry food to another should not  be such a problem because the dogs stomach is already used to that type of thing . :-D

Not necessarily so, reddoor. In many dogs, changing between brands of dried complete food (or different tinned makes) needs to be done over a period of about a fortnight. Others have tougher digestions and can cope more easily.
:)

Hi

You say that you give your dogs dry biscuit for breakfast and than a homecooked meat meal for dinner, what do you give them as a homecooked meal is it just meat or do you add other things to it, i have heard of people feeding their dogs proper meals but have always wondered what you give them and how much meat do you add, as our vet said that too much chicken can be bad for them, we cook Hamish a breast of chicken then i usually cut it up into cubes and give him about 3 cubes of a day on his dinner, as the vet said that too much meat can be bad for them, i feel that a bit of meat does not do a dog any harm as biscuits must get boring, do you think i should give him more chicken than just 3 cubes of a day as i must admit this is not much meat but i have always wondered as to how much is too much if you get what i mean.

Thanks
Helen

I think what your vet meant was if you feed a dog soley on just meat and nothing else that would be very bad for them as meat is deficiant in calcium and a few other things.
A typical dinner for my dogs would be: chicken,pasta or rice,veggies such as sweet potatoe,carrots,pumpkin and 1tbs. of liver,sometimes i add fruit such as pears,apples or mangoes,the more variety you can give them the better,i alternate the chicken with duck,rabbit,beef,green tripe or lamb.You could feed your dog a kilo of chicken at one time if you wanted as long as it has the above ingredients mixed with it to make it a COMPLETE meal,meat on it's own is not complete.I would definatly feed more than 3 cubes,the amount is up to you,maybe 1-2 cups.If my dogs have eaten alot during the day,they just get a bone for tea,such as chicken wings or a lamb or pork rib each.There are also loads of supplements available that you can mix in with their meals if you arent sure if they are getting a balanced diet with homemade,but as long as they are eating a predominatly dry complete food you should be o.k. You dont have to feed a "complete & balanced" meal every single night,balance is acheived over time,as long as they get a bit of everything by the end of the week you should be fine.You dont calculate carbs,protein etc. when you cook for your family,it's no different for our dogs,as long as they get a good variety of different meats,fruits(optional),veggies,organ meats and grains thing will balance themselves out.People seem to be put off of cooking for their dogs as it seems like rocket science but it is no different than cooking for ourselves.

christine

Hi Helen

Don't let him train you!!  Sounds like he's happy with something for a few days, then knows that if he plays up you'll give him something better.  Put his food down for 10-15 minutes and take it back up.  Do again next meal.  After a couple of days when he's hungry and he knows that nothing else better is coming he'll eat.  The more you keep changing things the fussier he'll get.

Wendy

Jess,i change around to completely different brands, for example,innova,royalcanin,eagle pack,nutro then i start again with innova,each bag usually lasts around 1mth. I have never had any problems with upset tummies,i never ease them into the change,once 1 bag is finished they get the alternate brand for their next meal,i'm sure their systems get used to it if you make it a regular thing.I have found that the flavours smell the same  within the same brand which is why i go for totally different brands,Burns will be available here in Australia soon so i will be throwing that into the mix aswell.

christine

Hi All

Well Hamish decided yesterday not to eat his biscuits again and this morning he has been sick because his stomach is obviously empty, i am still going to stick out with him with his food as i feel if i do change him to yet another brand he will eat this for a few days again and then do the same with them as he has done with the JWB.
I know that westie's are sicky dogs but i think this is because he has starved himself and his stomach is now empty as he is lively enough in himself and he keeps sitting by his treat cupboard in the kitchen thinking i am going to give in but if i do he will beat me ever time and i feel that he has got to learn to eat his dry food and then he gets a treat.
I have put the biscuits down this morning but he has been and sniffed them and just walked off so i will try him again later, i will keep you all posted as to how he goes.

Helen

Good for you. Hang in there.  He'll eat soon enough.  My girl gets the sickies when she has an empty tummy as well, and I know its bad watching him be miserable, but if he's willing to ask for 'goodies' then he can eat his regular food first (same principal as kids LOL).

Let us know how it goes.

Wendy

Hi

Thanks for replying, i am sticking it out at the moment, although we had a bit of a breakthrough at lunchtime, we opened a tin of tuna and i thought i would add some of this to his biscuits, i just mashed some in around the biscuits to get the flavour onto them and the little terror ate them, he had around 50g of biscuit in the bowl.
On the bag of JWb it says that he should be having around 200g of food per day but this seems a hell of a lot of biscuits to the 90g of Eukanbua that he used to have but i will just put around 90-100g per day down and see how he goes.

Thanks
Helen

Your'e doing well,dont give in now.altho adding the tuna could be seen as giving in ,in Hamish's eyes????
My dogs will sit by their treat cupboard staring at me with those big brown eyes,every now and then you will hear a wimper that starts to get louder and louder until i have to leave the room or else i know i WILL give in,but then i think of the hassles i will get at feeding time if they get even a little treat and all the nutrition they will miss out on  in not eating their dinner not to mention them getting their own way AGAIN!They are just like kids if you give in once to a tantrum they will expect it every time and not give up until you do!
Last night they both licked their bowls clean and they didnt even want their treat afterwards,go figure

Helen,just for the record i find it extremely difficult not to give in to them,i feel sorry for them knowing that they are hungry and not understanding why i wont give them what they want to eat as i had done so many times before,so your'e not alone in this :)

Please keep us updated.

christine

Hamish - when my sister feeds chicken to her 8 year old Westie, she buys a pack of 5 ready cooked drumsticks from Sainsbury's, and he has one a day with mixer biscuits (the mixer aren't a complete food, just plain biscuity things, that give the meat a bit of crunch, texture, and bulk it up a bit).  So for a couple of days he will have chicken and mixer, then he may have a day or two of dog food (he's a Cesar boy, Chicken Provencal that kind of thing ;-) which probably explains why he is a great lump!), then if they are doing a roast dinner, he will have lamb and mixer instead that day.

I was quite strict at first, insisting Millie only had dry puppy food, except as a special treat she could have chicken at their house.  Now I've eased up a bit, I quite often buy the same drumstick packs so she can have chicken and mixer for five days, then she may have just JWB for a few days, then I do the same, give her the Sunday roast meat with mixer on Sundays.  If we are cooking vegetables, I put aside some in plastic tubs in the fridge so that they can be mixed with anything, her JWB or her chicken.  Or sometimes i might cook up some rice to put in a tub.  If we have chinese takeaway, OCCASIONALLY I will order her her own chicken fried rice - a big tub of chicken, rice with a few peas thrown in - expensive I know, but the tub is huge and for a day or two she is getting chicken rice and vegetables, with minimum effort! :-D

She's still on 2 meals though, so she always gets at least one dried food meal a day.  I'm not sure what my plan of action will be when she goes down to one meal.

Hi

Just to update you all on how Hamish is doing, well yesterday we did really well with his food, i gave him some tuna mixed with his biscuits at lunchtime and he ate the lot and licked the bowl clean, last night we had chicken so i minced some up instead of putting it into chunks as i find if i chunk it he picks it out and then leaves the biscuits, on mincing this up he cleared the bowl again biscuits aswell so i was very pleased with him yesterday, i don't mind mixing some meat or fish if he will eat the whole lot but before he was just picking the meat out and then leaving the biscuits. This morning i gave him the rest of the little tin of tuna on his biscuits and he ate them all up again.
I have been over to our petshop today and have got some of the natures diet the chicken, carrot and rice variety and also some prize choice minced chicken so hopefully if i mix a small amount of this with the JWB he will carry on eating the biscuits aswell. Somebody also suggested that i should try the caesar packs as their dogs love a small amount of this mixed with their biscuit and they seem to do these in a lot of different varieties so i may try a pack of that another day to see how he goes, i would like to give him a bit more of a variety instead of just plain biscuits as i feel that 2 meals of just biscuits a day must get a bit boring to them as i would not like to eat the same thing every day.
If anybody has tried the caesar packs i would be grateful to hear what they think about them, i am going to put a separate post about caesar to get some feedback incase people don't read this section of the post.

Thanks again and i will keep you all updated on how he goes.
Helen and Hamish

I see some people don't agree with adding anything to a complete meal.  I am sorry but I disagree.  My boys gets fed Burns solely in the morning and then burns and naturediet in the evening.  I am not sure I would like to be fed the same thing morning, noon and night for days on end.  I alternate the flavours to give them a bit of extra variety but do not generally change bands as one has a funny tummy.  LIke someone else has said dogs love eating why make it boring for them!

For goodness sake Hamish get a grip and eat your dinner!!:-P
I think Hamish is relishing all the fuss and attention attatched to his food. I had a niece who was the same with food  and I would have loved to have had her for an extended visit ;-) I feed Burns and find it excellent, I rotate the flavours for a change and occasionally give extras in the form of fish,meat and chicken but serve these seperately so they are not deemed by the dog to be 'missed' from the complete food. A small whole carrot is used like a bone..knawed then eaten held between paws. Would you like a holiday with Aunty Hamish? :-)

;-)  ;-)  ;-)  ;-)
..for the 'o so serious' ones... before you shout to have me hung drawn and quartered and my parts thrown to the winds.. this was meant to be tongue -in- cheek!

Hi

Thanks for you reply, you said that you feed your boys Burns, how much roughly do they have of dry biscuit a day, Hamish gets JWB and on the back of the bag for a westie it says to feed them 200g per day, when i weighed this out this was a huge amount of biscuits and i could never see that a westie would eat this amount of biscuit per day, at the moment he is eating around 70g per day, and leaves the rest in the bowl as he is full. I just wondered how much weight of the burns your dogs have each day.

Helen

Hi Helen, you say Hamish only eats 70g that may be because you are feeding other things? The amount Burns state is the total allowance of food per dog per day, I feed 110g for a dog weighing 11kg..not sure what a Westie weighs 15-20kg? 20kg is 175g food. Did you contact Burns? They do an excellent sample pack with lots of booklets on feeding and pet health along with samples of food all by return of post and they are always happy to give advice. :-)
Ps. Thats girl actually..I only have one dog at the moment as I work (in a house with 60 girls) and can only take one dog to work with me :-D. Can't wait to retire and get back to having a house full of waifs and strays!! :-P

...sorry you  threw me for a moment... you don't feed Burns..you feed JWB so the weight of food will not be the same..each food differs in weight and daily recommendation!! :-)

Lol @ reddor - that sounds like just the sort of thing my aunties would say when I was a (incredibly fussy) nipper! :-D

Hi

You said that you feed a mixer biscuit with chicken, could i ask what mixer you use. If you give her mixer and chicken do you add anything else to this or would this mixer make a complete meal, only some people put vegetables with it but i am not sure what veg dogs can eat.

Helen

Is Hamish the Westie intent on world domination  :-P he has 5 topics on the forum and is this a record?!!!! Sorry smack wrist being flippent again !! :-)

Sorry i didn't realise you were only allowed to post a couple of topics on the forum!!!
I only wanted to ask other dog owners if they had had problems with their dogs going off of their food, as this is my first dog and i thought other experienced dog owners may be able to offer me some tips.

Helen

I am sorry Helen, I did not mean to offend :-) but I have read all the threads and it seems you have tried so hard to please Hamish with every possible combination of food and I have this picture in my mind of a tiny defiant little Westie saying ''Whatever she has in store for me today i'm not eating it'' and stamping his little feet!  :-(

reddor is only teasing you Helen, don't worry! :-D

You ask away, a lot of the questions you are asking are helping me too.

I buy Pedigree Mixer - because this is the only brand my local corner shop does and I never remember at Sainsburys or Pets at Home but I expect there are lot.  Its just biscuit, to add to wet/real food, its not a complete food.  If you've seen the Pedigree advert, they go on about how their research has discovered that dogs like a variety of textures, hence they always go for the clown toy...not sure how much truth there is in that, but using mixer kind of goes along that lines...some dogs like to have a crunch with their food.  Millie is one of those, since we changed from Pedigree Complete wetted down, to JWB served bone dry, she stopped bringing in crunchy stones to chew on every day :-D

Helen I read Reddors post before going shopping and it made me chuckle as has her last post about the defiant westie we both know how stubborn westies are, don,t take offence please & you ask all the questions you want.

Jean