Not eatting much

[russki1313]

My dog Blacky is a 1.5 year old male that hasn't been neutered.
He has been having some diet issues from the beginning.
When he was a pup he would lick his bowl clean . Then he started having skin problems and we were recommended to switch to a "bland table food diet". That didn't really help his skin and after a while he essentially stopped eatting it and we would have to hand feed/trick him into eatting it.
We are now back on dry dog food and he also needs to be hand fed/tricked into eatting it by adding some cheese/apples to it.
The past week we would leave it out for 15min and if not eatten take it away. It did improve in the sense that at least he comes up to the bowl and usually eats 1/4-1/2 recommended meal dose.
Otherwise he is a playful fun loving dog, not tired. 35 pounds
Why do you think i am having this problem? Hormones due to not neutering?
Any help would be great.

[ClantyreSheltie]

35 pounds!

I hope your dog is 18 inches tall!!

It's very likely he is self-regulating. When he thinks he's fat, he stops eating, and when he thinks he's skinny, he'll eat more. We had a dog that did that. He weighed exactly 22.4 pounds. At 22.6 he stopped eating, at 22.2 he was on the counter eating a stick of butter.

[lovemyshelties]

What are you feeding him? A high quality kibble I hope. Try mixing some wet into his food. We have four Shelties and none of them are picky eaters, thank goodness.

Also you say he weighs 35 lbs but don't mention how tall so can't tell whether he's overweight or not.

[goodword45]

Originally Posted by russki1313

My dog Blacky is a 1.5 year old male that hasn't been neutered.
He has been having some diet issues from the beginning.
When he was a pup he would lick his bowl clean . Then he started having skin problems and we were recommended to switch to a "bland table food diet". That didn't really help his skin and after a while he essentially stopped eatting it and we would have to hand feed/trick him into eatting it.
We are now back on dry dog food and he also needs to be hand fed/tricked into eatting it by adding some cheese/apples to it.
The past week we would leave it out for 15min and if not eatten take it away. It did improve in the sense that at least he comes up to the bowl and usually eats 1/4-1/2 recommended meal dose.
Otherwise he is a playful fun loving dog, not tired. 35 pounds
Why do you think i am having this problem? Hormones due to not neutering?
Any help would be great.

Buddy has the same eating issues minus the skin problems. He was neutered in December of 2011, but that made no difference. He just eats what he wants then stops. No matter how much we entice him to eat more, he won't eat another bite.

He really has done better since we switched him to purina one for puppies (a suggestion from another owner). At first he ate all the bites. There are three different bites: dark brown, tan, and crinklely tan. I'm not sure what the flavors are of each, but now he will eat around the dark brown ones to only eat the crinklely tan ones and maybe eat the tan ones. We also mix Nutro puppy wet with it and he eats better.

Another thing we mix in is ProSense supplement for the coat. This is an oil. I bought it at Walmart. It must taste pretty good. It smells good to me. Just mix in a teaspoon.

I know this is weird but it is better than eating nothing.

Previously we had tried these foods: Nutro-both dry and wet-likes the wet; Evo puppy bites-likes a few days; Beneful-hated it. We have bags of other foods too, which are not even 1/4 used.

He doesn't seem to have lost weight at all. Buddy is only 8 months and weights about 14-15 lbs and is 14" tall. He's still happy and active.

This is a work in progress for us. My husband says just give him the food and he will eat eventually, but then he turns around to give him treats all day long.

Feed fewer treats is my last advice. Hard to do for us, but maybe you will have more luck.