Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
My dog has suddenly become picky.
Dog in question is a 9 year old french bulldog. She is on denamarin and ursodiol for high liver enzymes, but they're in control on the medication. She has always been a champion eater.
About 2 months ago she suddenly stopped eating. We took her to the vet and found that she had an abscessed tooth. Got the dental work taken care of and, after 2 weeks on a soft diet, she went back to eating her original (raw) diet just fine.
Then she stopped eating again. Took her back to the vet and they checked EVERYTHING (and this is a good vet, it's a university vet hospital). Abdominal ultrasound, complete physical, everything. They could find absolutely nothing physically wrong with her that might cause lack of appetite. The vet suggested that maybe she got a little spoiled when she was having her teeth problems.
So I got canned food again, and she ate it. For about a week. Got a new kind of canned food and she at that for about a week.
I'm now on the 4th kind of canned food and she is again refusing to eat. She ate one meal on Thursday, nothing yesterday and I finally convinced her to eat about half a meal tonight.
What the hell???? What would make my normally food-driven dog suddenly not want to eat, when she appears to be in perfect health?
Re: My dog has suddenly become picky.
*TTC since 10/11*
BFP: 9/30/12, EDD: 6/15/13
*~*Our miracle arrived on 6/13/13*~*
Yes, they did. In fact that was one of their first ideas. All of her bloodwork came back fine, which is why they did the abdominal ultrasound. The vet said that she couldn't even find a hint of anything on the ultrasound.
The weird thing is that she'll eat a new food just fine, but after about a week wants nothing to do with it (she won't even lick it).
if she'll eat new food, that honestly sounds like she's just taking advantage of you.
i don't have the patience to deal with that, so i'd offer food, then take it away after 10 minutes if they don't eat. repeat at next mealtime. no treats if they don't eat their meal.
if you're nicer than me, you can just switch up the foods more often, before she gets tired of it.
Have you seen my monkey?
I've tried that, and she'll go more than 2 full days without eating. Then I get stressed out and give her a new kind of food.
Am I messing it up by breaking after 2 days?
yeah, she's learning you'll cave. i know it's hard watching your pup not eat, but given her age, size, and health problems, i'd actually learn towards just switching her food up all the time.
Have you seen my monkey?
I was going to say "ditto" to nital and just implement the tough love concept until she's finally so hungry that she's the one who gives in instead of you. But I honestly don't know how that would affect her considering her liver condition. I wouldn't want to make her worse, and it's definitely hard to stand firm when your little one isn't eating! I hope you find something that works.
Final idea: maybe very slightly searing her raw in a hot pan for a few seconds would give it a nice "new" aroma and entice her to eat it? I know a lot of people first switching over to raw have done this as an interim step in getting their pets to eat the new food.
B/w 1/8: betas 17,345, progesterone 25.6
Last winter/early spring she had a UTI. They did some blood work when I took her to the vet and found that her ALT level was very high (it was around 600 and the upper normal limit is ~90). The vet explained that this is an indication of chronic inflammation, but that it doesn't give any clues as to the cause. We had an ultrasound done to make sure that she didn't have any masses in her liver and they found nothing.
Left untreated, this kind of inflammation can cause fibrosis and eventual liver failure. I also declined to have a biopsy done, and we decided to wait a bit to see if the levels went down on their own or if it was an ongoing thing. A few months later her bloodwork showed the same levels, so we decided to just try her on the medication to see if it worked.
She never had any kind of symptom that there was an issue with her liver, we only discovered it because of the UTI. She was always a very food-driven dog, so appetite was never a problem before this stuff with her teeth cropped up.
We have a picky girl, and we just rotate flavors for her - mostly works, and when it doesn't I'll break down and give her a shake of parmesean cheese (a reco from a friend with a herding dog)...works every time to get her started, and I only have to do it every other month or so. Sometimes she still leaves half a meal, but it just gets picked up and thrown out. We were in a similar boat where the vet wanted her to gain weight when we first got her, so we didn't want a starving stand off.
Then we found the ultimate solution to a picky eater...a second dog. Now she's almost in need of a diet.