What can I do to make my dog eat?

Original Question: Hi Toby my dog has been very picky over his food for the last two days. He once loved this food but now I have to spoon feed him in order to get it down. He is on the Royal Canin Gastrointestinal low fat wet food. Last year he had pancreatitis and we had to switch him to this food but now he turns his nose up at it. Any suggestions for us? Thank you. - Debra

Jan 27, 2019

Hi Debra,

The sporadic appetite is interesting to me. Let me first say that I hear this kind of thing all the time and interestingly enough, I hear it with dogs that are undisciplined. Dogs that didn’t receive a healthy amount of discipline when they were young tend to, for lack of a better term, be stubborn and demanding. Sometimes they won’t eat their food unless the owner puts some special effort into making it, like adding treats or other additional ingredients to it. A dog can, in a sense, become like a spoiled child waiting for that extra special attention to occur associated with the food bowl before they are satisfied enough to eat.

Consider this in all these situations where a healthy dog refuses to eat, I have never seen a dog starve itself. If it’s healthy and has no underlying disease process then it is usually a behavioural issue. I recommend that you see your veterinarian and make sure that there are no health concerns and then consider putting the food out morning and night for 15 minutes each time and then picking it up. Don’t add anything extra to it and don’t play into this demanding nature where you put extra attention on the food. This is often pretty hard for owners to do because they have a really hard time seeing their dog not eat. In most of these cases the owners have actually inadvertently created the behaviour by reinforcing it and giving so much attention to the pet food for adding lots of tasty things to it. Many dogs that are picky eaters have learned to wait until they see that happen before we leave.

After having said the above, many dogs will have a natural fluctuation in their appetite, however, the lack of appetite can be very serious. There are many diseases that will reduce appetite over time and if this is a new development, I greatly encourage you to have a physical exam and consultation performed with your veterinarian to make sure nothing sinister is brewing under the surface. Performing blood work and urinalysis would be a good start to determining if any ailments are developing which could cause this symptom.