Dog being weird with her food

[Jess041]

Originally Posted by mbfrench

Plus...if there is a problem with the food (recall) you have already ditched the bag,and no referance for batch numbers & epiration dates.

THIS! Soooo important!

[Calliesmom]

Originally Posted by Jess041

THIS! Soooo important!

agreed

[Tagg]

The other thing that happens when you put the food directly into a bin is that it will pick up the taste of the material it is being housed in.
I experienced a whole group of dogs getting sick on food that had not been stored properly either in transportation or in the store itself. One of those dogs was a newly whelped bitch that became quite ill - not great on day 1 of a lactation. The food didn't smell bad or look bad but when I fed all the other dogs out of this newly opened bag the next day, they too became ill. Of course I had already rushed to the vet with my girl and spent mega $$$ trying to find out what was wrong with her!
Recently my Portie friend had this happen to her. Dogs wouldn't eat the food and they are chow hounds. She called me and I told her to get another bag of food right away from a different source. Sure enough, end of problem. She took the first bag back and got a refund.

[BarbV]

I wouldn't discount entirely that there may be something wrong with the dog rather than the food. I've always maintained that a healthy dog would never starve themselves.

So I do agree to switching out the food as a starting point. Perhaps feed a chicken and rice home meal for a couple of days. If the dog is eating that then maybe it was the food. If dog still won't eat, then its times for the vet.

I know when Bacca's thyroid meds are out of kilter when suddenly he doesn't want to eat anymore. Thyroidism in Shelties in more prevalent than people realize.

I know I've been on my soapbox on this topic lately, but I just finished reading The Canine Epidemic and its got my alert signals up!

[SheepOfBlue]

I pour the guys food in a plastic bin (actually 2) but I was then regular. Usually every other bag. Also when I put new in I roll the bin to make sure I am not pouring fresh on old and letting old sit in the bottom.

Of course Sca will eat almost anything and Spitfire is almost as bad out of fear of starvation around Sca

[mbfrench]

http://www.dogfoodscoop.com/pet-food-storage.html

[Fragglejh]

So after a week where the whole family ended up with the stomach flu (apart from the dog, thank goodness!) Georgia is completely back to normal! The food bowl is being drained in the usual fashion, that being sniff to check it out first, a good look round to make sure no one is going to interfere, and then gently taking out bits of food and crunching away.

I've just read back through the posts (thanks for them, BTW) and thankfully I've never just emptied the food bag straight into the Tupperware container thing. This is mainly because being a newbie dog owner (I grew up with a dog in the house, but I was little when my parents rescued him) I liked having the nutritional/feeding instructions to hand. Plus, having a brother who's a food scientist, I've always been made aware that having the original packaging for food was useful if there should be a food recall.

Now that I've had the info from you guys about the food going moldy/stale, I'll be sure to keep it in the bag :)

Thanks again. I guess I'll have to keep in mind that my girl is sensitive to our health.

[Ann]

Happy to hear you're all doing better...humans and Sheltie! Isn't it amazing how intuitive these furkids are?