This morning, while preparing Molly's usual breakfast of THK and chicken backs (and since it's Sunday an egg sunny side up) I mixed in two blueberries just for the heck of it. She gobbled it down with her usual vigor. When I looked in her otherwise spotless bowl, left standing were two untouched blueberries!
How do dogs do this???
Does anyone else's dog have the innate ability to single out and discern food, while eating in a frenzied manner? Do you think this is a survival technique? - or just a picky dog?

Maybe she just doesn't like blueberries. Mine love them!

Some dogs will pick out something that they don't like or something new introduced.

Many will pick out pills if not crushed & then some won't eat food with meds in it at all. Remember they can smell it all as individual orders. (we smell stew cooking on the stove....they smell carrots, potatoes, meat, peas etc)

Others, like mine, have extreme food drive & will devour anything that I put in their dishes. Basically they trust that whatever I put in there is good food. Even my male that may sometimes pick out something new & taste it & then eat it up.

As far as animals being able to pick things out....my horse used to pick out crushed meds unless it was ground to a powder & mixed in his grain with a little corn oil so it stuck to the grain. And he was a pig & would eat anything & bolt down his food if we didn't have some large rocks in there to slow him down. (he'd have to push the rocks around to get at all the grain & it slowed him down from bolting his food, which is dangerous for horses)Look at the size of their mouth & the ability to pick out something so small as tiny pieces of pills. Surely dogs can do it.

My dogs do that. If they skipped a meal, I know they'd go back and finish it up. But let's face it: they get their three squares (or two, or whatever) and can afford to leave something despicable (to the dog). LOL

Mine all love blueberries, but raw liver would sit there polished shiny but unbitten.

It's not a survival technique as far as the blueberries go, though, I don't think. I've seen video of their closest ancestor, the Gray Wolf, eat berries.

And when you offer a high-sugar ripe fruit, every dog I've owned has grabbed it greedily.

Maybe it's one way we are alike .... that taste for sugar and salt.

Blueberries are low in sugar and high in extremely good stuff like anthocyanin and antioxidants (like flavonoids).

I have to beat Harley to the blackberry bush if I have some for myself. Dexter does not seem to even think that they are a food choice.

Harley would eat the dirt out of my vaccum cleaner. Dexter is a lot more selective.

 Quote: Ariane Gauthier

I have to beat Harley to the blackberry bush if I have some for myself. Dexter does not seem to even think that they are a food choice.

Harley would eat the dirt out of my vaccum cleaner. Dexter is a lot more selective.

That's funny, because blackberries and those other ones that are like blackberries (I forget the name) are the only berries so far that my dogs don't love.

I think strawberries are the paws-down favorite, though. Good enough to be a high-value
reward!



ETA
Found the other one:
"The olallieberry is a cross between the loganberry and the youngberry, each of which is itself a cross between blackberry and another berry."

I don't even know if olallieberries are everywhere. I don't remember seeing them on the East Coast. Here they're a major pie favorite, though. (Not a major dog favorite, IME.)


Edited by Connie Sutherland (06/09/2013 06:22 PM)
Edit reason: ETA

My dogs love blueberries, too, but then they love just about everything. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single food I've ever offered them that they flat-out refused. I have found, though, that if it's something they've never seen/tasted/smelled before, I sometimes have to really entice them the first time -- "Mmmm. Who wants to try this??? Oh, it's reaaalllyyy good! Yummmmm!" That usually convinces them to try it, and then they're usually looking for me to give them another piece of whatever it was. It also helps if they see me eating it first -- assuming it's something I would want to eat!

Horses really amaze me. With their eyes positioned on the side of their head, I'm not sure how good a view they have of what's in their feed tub, but they sure do have an uncanny ability to leave just the smallest morsel of something they don't like. It's also interesting to watch them graze. If they accidentally take a bite of some weed they don't like or they get some dirt attached to the grass, they just work it around with their lips and manage to spit out the offending parts without losing a single blade of the good grass!

Horses cannot see 3-4 ft in front of them or directly behind them. When they jump over a fence they are essentially jumping 'blind' about the time that they 'take off' for the fence. They are jumping that fence basically from memory. Also why they can get spooked when you walk behind them if they don't know that you are there & can kick out.

They can pick out things...because their upper lip is like a finger.

They can almost see completely around themselves with the exception of those 2 blind spots because their eyes are on the sides of their heads.

Also as a note....their eyes & brain do not work like ours do. If they see something for the first time with their right eye ...that does not register in their brain as having been seen if they then walk by it on their left side. It will be like seeing it again for the first time. Strange, I know.