What started as an Instagram post became too long-winded and needed a blog post of it's own and so today, we're talking dogs. More specifically, fussy eater dogs.
Much like my post on how I chose the food I give to my dogs, this post was originally written in April 2023 over on my personal blog but I have rewritten it for the purposes of Let's Talk About...
So, rewind to 2023. I had just moved house again for the third time in two years and as a result of all the upheaval, Barney had developed a little anxiety.
Mostly, it displayed as him drinking excessively and subsequently urinating excessively but he also developed a phobia of travelling, which started when I upgraded my car to a van for the business. He got over it for a while in time for our second house move but move number three brought it back on again and as such, we began trialling a new food, Royal Canin Calm.
The first thing I noticed about this food is that compared to what I was feeding (Tribal Senior), the portion sizes were much bigger. I remember when I first made the switch to Tribal years ago, I was really surprised by how small the portion sizes were for my boys (just 70g a day for Archie who weighs 5.5kg and 100g for Barney at 7.5kg). Barney has always been a fussy eater and finding a food that he would eat a whole portion of in one go was a blessing. This is because Archie is very food oriented and would hover around Barney's bowl, whining at anything Barney had left. Switching them to Tribal out a stop to that and honestly, my relationship with Archie improved. Royal Canin Calm saw Barney requiring 140g a day and the kibble is much smaller and lighter than the Tribal pellets, which meant Barney was now being offered a whole bowl full of biscuits, rather than the small portions he was used to.
When introducing a new food, I would usually follow this procedure:
25% new food and 75% old food for the first three days
50:50 for the next three days
75:25 for the next three days
100% new food
However, at the time, Barney was recovering from an upset stomach and so was on the old faithful chicken and rice combo (which apparently is old news now and the new version is turkey and pumpkin, but more on that another day). As a result, I introduced the Royal Canin Calm differently to usual and started adding small amounts of the kibble to his chicken and rice, gradually building up the amount he was having.
Despite being a fussy eater, Barney loves to try new food so when he finally had his full portion, he looked as though all his birthdays and Christmases had come at once.
He dived into the bowl, hoovering up great mouthfuls of kibble with enthusiasm I had never before seen from him. He gobbled up that first bowl full and afterwards staggered away in a doggie food coma.
This continued for the first three days or so until (I assume) he realised that these bigger potions weren't a mistake on my part and that I wasn't about to take them away. For three weeks, he happily ploughed through his portions, sometimes taking a break halfway through and returning after a drink or a rummage through his toy box and as we neared the end of the first bag, I ordered a second. And almost as if he knew that I had just spent another small fortune on this medicated food, Barney lost interest.
I put his breakfast down one morning and watched as he approached it, saw what was in the bowl and went back to bed. The spell was broken. He visited his bowl numerous times that day and every time would snuffle up one or two biscuits, but no more. I like to think that I'm pretty good at reading Barney's body language and it seemed to me that he was still hungry but was put off by how many biscuits were in his bowl so I started offering him just a few biscuits at a time. This worked in the sense that he would happily eat a much smaller portion, but he wasn't interested in me refilling the bowl so I still couldn't get his daily requirement into him.
He would eat more if I played with him, which is how he used to eat years ago and was the very time consuming reason why I switched him to Tribal in the first place. This behaviour is called counterfreeloading and I will write a separate post on it in the future but it essentially means that some animals prefer to hunt for their food and so domestic cats and dogs will play with their toys and "reward" themselves with food from their bowl. Barney certainly does this and as a very fussy eating youngster, I used to throw his ball for him past his bowl, which he would chase and on fetching it back would stop at his bowl for a mouthful of food. Effective, but time consuming.
I came to the conclusion that Barney was over-faced by the portion sizes and it's something that I've seen in my clients too. I have met dogs who are allowed to graze from a large bowl full of biscuits all day long and they maintain their body weight by managing their own consumption. These dogs may have been slightly heavier than ideal, but they weren't hugely overweight. I can only assume that they kept themselves comfortably full and ate when they were feeling peckish. Personally, as someone who does a lot of training with her dogs, I would rather be the one controlling my dogs diet as I use a lot of treats in my training and it's easier to reward a dog with food if they're not already full.
I suspect that the reason for dogs behaving this way around food is something to do with an abundance mindset. In the first few days of feeding Barney his new food, he was wolfing it down. It was like he was in a rush to eat it before I could take it away and within a few days of always receiving the bigger portions, he decided that this was the norm now and slowed down. In the wild, dogs and cats don't know when their next meal is coming from and so will eat as much as possible when the opportunity arises. This innate instinct is still there under the surface. Having plenty of food available to him has made it less valuable to Barney whereas the smaller portions he was having of Tribal were small enough to keep him interested and he never left a bowl of Tribal unfinished.
After two months of trialling Royal Canin Calm and I decided not to continue with it because I simply could not get Barney to eat enough of it although I must admit that Barney's behaviour at home did change while he was on it. However, medicated foods take a little while to work and I began to see a difference in Barney's behaviour immediately which leads me to think that it was the other things that we started doing that impacted his mood and not necessarily the food. With my vets support, I started taking away the water bowl to break Barney's habit of drinking too much water, which in turn resolved the excessive urinating. Making changes to my stress levels and managing my mood had a noticeable impact as well and it's no secret that dogs are very empathic creatures.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the one behaviour that did change and that I do think was linked to the calm food, given the timeline. Barney started humping his toys again. Looking back, I can't remember when Barney stopped humping his toys as it is something I always dissuaded him from doing after a particularly vigorous session lead to a urinary tract infection a few years ago. I don't remember him trying to do it in the time since we moved our of our old house two years before, which makes me wonder if his loss of libido was related to the stress of all the life changes we went through. It can happen to humans so why not dogs too? I noticed his renewed interest in his toys after we'd finished the first bag of Calm food so the timing lines up.
So what are our options as the owners of fussy eaters?
Feeding little and often is one option but if you were asking my advice, I would recommend switching your dog onto a more nutrient-dense food like Tribal (not a sponsor, just a fan) so that they are getting everything they need in a much smaller portion size.
I wrote in Going Tribal about how I came to chose Tribal over other brands but one of the benefits is that; because it's cold pressed, the kibble doesn't swell in water the same way other biscuits do. This means that if you add water to it, it turns into a paste which is great for stuffing Kongs with but also means that older dogs who struggle with hard biscuits won't have any issues.
My main reason for feeding Tribal is the level of joint support offered by the Senior food and I genuinely believe that this is contributing to how well Archie is ageing. At the grand old age of 15, Archie is more spritely today than he was at age 5. More so actually.
Owning a fussy eater is frustrating, even more so if you own more than one dog and the other one is greedy and liable to steal food from the fussy eaters bowl. Although brands like Tribal are at the more expensive end of the scale, being able to feed smaller portions means that a bag of it lasts longer than cheaper alternatives and the peace of mind that comes with being able to put down a bowl of food and know your dog is going to finish it before their sibling steals it is worth the extra cost in my opinion.
In the social media world, other owners of fussy eaters claim to have had success with:
Puzzle feeders
Snuffle mats (pictured right)
Feeding from treat balls
Hand-feeding
Allowing the dog to graze
Adding wet food or dog-gravy to make dry kibble more appealing
I have not yet heard anyone talking about the impact of portion size, so if I may throw my own tip into the ring for consideration, it's this:
Reduce the portion size by feeding a higher quality food.
If you own a fussy eater and try this, do let me know how you get on - I would love to hear from you. It has worked wonders for my own fussy eater and having lived the daily frustration of worrying that he wasn't eating enough, I really do believe that the extra cost of a more expensive food is worth it for stress-free feeding and peace of mind. Until next time,
Forever paws,
Aislinn 🐾
Images from wix.com unless stated otherwise.
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