My 8 month old GSD is not a good eater. We crawl on all fours all around the house and try to hand feed him but he still barely eats. What am I doing wrong?

Question

Dear Cindy,

I'm very excited  I found your website; it's so informative and helpful. I have a so-called long-hair  GSD (technically still a puppy, he has just turned 8 months). The only problem that 'I'm still trying to solve is feeding. He is not a good eater. We really have to crawl after the dog on all fours around all house and try to hand feed him. He wouldn't eat from his bowl, it's a stainless-steel bowl and he is drink his water from exact same one mounted right next to the one with food on the same height. 

Our breeder provides very detailed info as to which foods/brands to feed and which ones s to stay away from. Just like you, she is advocating the raw food diet and actually feeds all her dogs her home-made 'meatloaf' recipe.   

We started off with preparing that homemade food ourselves and been feeding it 3 times a day for almost a month. My puppy was very eager eater. Then suddenly, he'd refused eating it at all and this is when we started hand-feeding him and crawling after him all over the house try to feed him.  He  would take a few bytes and that would be eat.

We then went out and bought  Embark and Thrive from Honest Kitchen, but he keeps turning his head away from either food. He doesn't like dry kibbles either; occasionally, he would eat a few hand-full if we feed him by hand, but would never go to the bowl himself where all the kibbles are.

So we started feeding him boneless raw chicken thighs and breasts and again, he was eating them for about a month and then suddenly refuse.

Now we started feeding him boiled chicken or boiled beef once a day (as you can probably guess by now, he would have to be hand-fed). His last meal would be raw ground beef and some kibbles.

I'm at the loss here. I keep hearing from almost all dog owners that their dogs are eating  no problem whatever you give them. He is being exercised regularly, about two hours a day of walking  plus three times week we have two hour training sessions with a professional dog trainer which are pretty intense; he gets home tired and would lay down for about 2-3 hours resting.

At 8 months he weighs around 72 lbs so I think he is neither under- nor over-weight.

What am I doing wrong? How can I fix his eating issues. Should he only be fed once a day now? May be this will make him hungry?

Thank you very much in advance for any advise,
Anatoliy

Accepted Answer

I would stop trying to hand feed this dog because you are going to create even more issues by doing this.

The first thing is to have a complete check up done, with blood work to make sure he doesn’t have an underlying medical issues If he checks out ok, then I would cut him back on his meal frequency. By doing what you have been, you are creating a picky eater. A healthy dog eats! Like my mom used to tell us “this is not a restaurant.” :)

My dogs are fed once or twice a day in their crate.  If they don’t eat within 10 minutes, the food goes away and they will not be offered anything until their next meal. Don’t leave bowls of kibble sitting out, and do not offer him anything at all until his next meal. 

I would make a wager that if I had your dog for a week, he would be eating all his food when offered. At 8 months old, he doesn’t need 3 meals a day. He would be put on a feeding schedule and I would stick to it. I would feed him once daily and see how that goes.  

By coaxing him to eat and crawling around after him you are doing him a great disservice. You are behaving like a follower, and putting him in the power position as well as diminishing one of the most useful drives our dogs have - FOOD DRIVE. If he doesn’t have food drive, it takes away a great reward we can use for training.