This is my first time posting on here but I have gotten a lot of wonderful information from here so thank you. I have a 10 month old GSD named Sacha. He is at 85lbs now and I am having no problem with his weight. The problem comes during feeding time (twice a day). He use to be super excited about eating and made training things like the down stay wonderfully helpful. But now I have to leave his food out for about a hour before he gets around to eating it. He does eat it all and the stool is fine, but he just doesn't seem as "excited" as he use to be. I have tried cutting back on the amount of food and am at the minimum amount the bag (eukanuba dry large breed) recommends. I know raw diets are the way to go but I just can't afford that right now.
I also tried the 15 mins to eat. All that did was make him hungry at the next meal but when the meal after that rolled around he wouldn't care about the 15 mins. So we were missing meals here and there and his schedule was all messed up.
I know my thoughts were all over the place but any help would be greatly appreciated. maybe a different type of dry food??

thank you
patrick

Patrick, you'll have to delete your sig pic while you work with its size.

I'm sorry, but it's WAY too big. Thanks!

Now your post:

I would absolutely dump that food, which hovers near the bottom of the list of commercial foods.

Also, if you can link us to a side view of the dog, standing, we can tell you better if he is just not in need of the amount of food he is getting.

Is he otherwise in good health? Recent vet exam?

Welcome Patrick.

For starters, I would say yes to a new food. Something meat based. Chicken IS the first ingredient listed, if I am thinking of the same food, but is followed by 3 or 4 grains.

I don't know if that will make him like eating more. Still, there are better foods for the money.

Also, even the minimum recommended amount is too much for a lot of dogs.

Is the dog losing any weight?

Welcome, Patrick. I'm in KY, too. London.

As to food. That is one of the reasons I put mine on raw.

I was feeding her Natural Balance (I think), he really expensive one that is organic, natural, blah, blah blah. Although it did have a little more meat based ingridients in it, she just wasn't at all interested in food.

Good luck.

Thanks for the response!! Sorry about the size of that picture, I will work on getting it smaller. He is in good health, he is VERY energetic ALL the time. No ribs showing but I can still feel them which from what I read is what you want. What would be a good dry food to get him? I had him on Natural Choice while he was a puppy and that was what he was on when all of this started (at about 7 months). That was the reason for the switch to Eukanuba because I was curious if it was that particular food or food in general. Would something like Blue Buffalo or Innova be good??
I just have a feeling it has to be the type of food because he loves the treats i use during training, I give him raw carrots now, and he loves beef knuckles!! My buddy who has a 2 1/2 year old GSD said he was having something similar happening and he would mix canned tuna in with the dry food...
Thanks again for all the help!!

Patrick

I would recommend a higher quality food- Innova is great!- and also consider an end to free-feeding.

My Golden Retriever is on Raw Food since she was small. I think and i am sure that Raw Diet is the best. She is very active and intelligent. She is also odor free and has healthy teeth too since she is getting 3 big bones in a week.

I think Dog Food is processed and you can’t compare any Dog Food with Raw Diet.Processed Dog food is like giving your Dog Maggie or Koko noodles everyday..Can we eat those processed noodles or processed food everyday??

Raw Diet It is cheaper then Dog food and doesn’t consume any time too. Switch to raw....

One thought, if you have the freezer space to do this - raw does not have to be more expensive. It used to be prohibitively expensive for me. Then I got a used freezer (works great) off Kijiji, and feeding raw is now a major cost savings b/c I can chicken backs and carcasses (huge ones) for $5/20lbs and I have somewhere to store it.

But if you don't want to go raw yet, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, there is a list of acceptable high quality dog kibbles on this site....i'll try to find it.


Being one who doesn't feed raw I have my dog on Orijen

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/showproduct.php?product=915&cat=all

that is a great site for comparing dog kibble.

Well thank you for all the raw diet advice but I am gonna stick with dry food. If anyone knows about some good dry dog foods that would be great. And Wendy thank you for the website I will check into it!!

Patrick