Chapter 20

Getting Your Dog Started on It’s New Diet

No matter how good a diet is.  If your dog will not eat it, it is a complete waste of time, money and effort, and will have no effect on your dog.  It is also very frustrating when a dog will not eat something you have gone to a bit of trouble preparing.

It Can be Done!

Lots of people watch their dog deteriorate on it’s old cooked and/or commercial dog food diet, simply because they do not know how to persuade it to eat a more healthy diet.  This chapter is therefore very important.  It is here to teach you how to get even the fussiest dog eating properly.

• Basically, you are goint to rely on patience (yours), hunger (your dog’s), and low down cunning – (yours).

Many owners simply change their dog’s diet.  One day the old way, and the next day the new way.  No problems, no fuss, no drama.  Owners usually know when it will be like this.  Their dog is the sort of dog that will ‘’eat anything’’.

However, this is not always the case.  Lots of dogs are very picky when it comes to food.  Many have trained their owners as to just exactly what they will and will not eat… almost always to the detriment of their health.

If your dog is like that, refuses to eat the new food, and has you tearing your hair out, or very simply wanting to give it all away because it is much too hard… don’t worry.  All you need are a few pointers.  As usual, it really is very simple.

• There are two basic ways of getting your fussy dog to eat the new food.  There is the fasting method and the gradual change method.  Then of course, there is the combination of the two.

The fasting method is absurdly simple.  All you have to do is not feed your dog for several days until he or she is ready to eat just about anything.  In my experience, the only creature this is hard on, is the poor owner.  Many owners feel it is their bounden duty to be stuffing food down their dog’s throat at every opportunity.  When they are not doing that they tend to think they are being cruel and heartless and that thieir dog will not love them if they did anything different.

WRONG… STOP FEEDING YOUR DOG…You are NOT going to starve your dog.  That would be cruel and unnecesary.  All you are going to do, is provoke some REAL HUNGER.

• Large numbers of dogs, like ourselves eat way too much food.  Many dogs are so over fed, that they often refuse to eat all but a few items to which they have become addicted.  In this case, a few days without food will work absolute wonders.

Check With Your Vet Before Fasting Your Dog

• Before you decide to change your dog’s diet, do check with your local vet and make sure that should you decide to follow the fasting method, your dog does not have some underlying condition that would make fasting unwise.  If your dog is young and healthy, I would not anticipate any problems.

The other method is the GRADUAL CHANGE method.  If this is not done properly, it will not work.  It is no good adding a few items of fresh whole food to a commercial dog food of some other form of bad feeding to which your dog is addicted.  In that case, your dog will simply reject the new foods.  At this point a lot of owners give up entirely and go back to their bad feeding habits.

• The trick with a really difficult dog, one that is addicted to just a few food items, is to fool that dog into believing that nothing has changed.
• Step one is to identify that food which your dog absolutely loves.
• Step two is to get your dog used to eating that food in a finely minced state.
• Step three is to finely mince the food you wish to get you dog eating… e.g. a chicken wing.
• Step four is to add a tiny amount of the new food to the much loved minced food.  The amount must be so tiny your dog cannot detect it.  Hunger helps here.  Once your dog is eating this, go to step five.
• Step five is to GRADUALLY INCREASE the amount of the new food in the much loved but minced food.  Eventually you dog will be eating the new food by itself.  If the new food does not need to be minced, then gradually lessen off the mincing process, until you are feeding it in the form you want it to be fed.

Sometimes a dog will eat part of the new diet, but not other bits.  In that case all you have to do, is follow the above steps with the food items it won’t eat.  For example, many people report that their dog refuses to eat vegetables of any description. 

• Do Not Give Up !

Take those vegetables and turn them into mush with a food processor or a juicer.  Now go through the process I have just described.

You can win, and your dog will be much happier and healthier and hang around for a much longer time if you can swithc it from an unhealthy cooked or processed food diet to a healthy diet based on raw meaty bones.

Many dogs start their new diet with enthusiasm and then suddenly refuse to eat it !

What you have to realise is that when dogs start to eat HEALTHY foods, the dogs you could never fill, the chronically hungry ones will often stop being hungry.  For the first time in that dog’s life, it is truly satisfied.  This will be a new experience for you as well.  Such a dog will not be constantly looking for more to eat as it has always done.  Understandably, many owners becoming alarmed, thinking their dog is sick.

This often results in an owner ringing me to say… ‘’he really liked those veggies (or whatever) to start with, but for the last couple of nights he has refused to eat them.’’  It’s great when they ring and tell me straight away.  Then I can reassure them.  Tell them to fast their dog for twenty four hours, and then retry either with that sort of natural food or another one in their new repertoire of foods.

Others are so used to their dogs EATING CONSTANTLY, that they find it difficult to disappoint their dogs with foods they don’t appear to like.  Their dog really has got them by the short and curlies!  These folk in an effort to please their dogs and get their dogs to eat something.. resort to feeding them on precessed foods once again.

Those foods of course are cooked and have flavor enhancers such as salt.  So of course the dog eats them.  This often ‘’proves’’ to the owner that it is actually the old food the dog requires, and the new diet is instantly dropped.  DON’T BE FOOLED.

Another way to go at this, particularly with an older dog not used to eating raw food, a dog that has eaten processed food or cooked food all it’s life, is to gradually reduce the amount of cooking you do, until eventually, the food is presented in it’s raw state.

• By starting your dog on meals that are partly raw and partly cooked, you can gradually get your dog accustomed to eating healthy foods without it being too much of a shock to your dog’s system.  If changes in diet are made very abruptly, they will sometimes be totally rejected, or if eaten, they may cause diarrhea.