Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi all,

I could really use your advice. I have an Italian Greyhound [Baci] who will be 9 months old this Saturday 3/21. She is a big girl: been staying between 15.6 & 15.9 lbs. She is 13” high at the shoulder and 16-17” in length from her neck to her tail.

Up until 2 weeks ago she was eating like clockwork . . . 1/3 cup of Royal Canine Puppy 33 at 8 am and another 1/3 cup at 5 pm. . That's 2/3's cup a day plus a few treats.
All of a sudden she stopped eating. Like she doesn’t want that food anymore. I mean at 8 am she would normally run to have her food and again at 5 pm. Now nothing.

She's her usual self, likes to sleeps a lot or bask in the sun and comes alive later in the day and early evening running around, playing etc.

We have moistened her food with water; that worked in the beginning. Now , she will eat most of her food only if we add chicken broth or chicken soup.

She has no problem eating treats. We took a look at a dog food analysis web site and was considering “Blue Buffalo – BLUE” dog food for it’s nutrition value etc.

What would you suggest doing? What kind of food should we consider gradually changing over to? What do you feed your IG’s?

Your advice is most appreciated.
BACIDAD

First, make sure your pup doesn't have some sort of worm infestation by going to the vet and getting her checked out. If that comes back clean, then there's a few things I like to try. 1) This may sound mean, but put the bowl of food down and let it stay there for 15 minutes. If she doesn't eat it in those 15 minutes, take it away. You can put hte bowl back down in 2 or 3 hours or even wait until the next scheduled meal time. Dogs won't starve themselves unless they have a medical problem going on. 2) Make her work for her food. Take the pieces of kibble and have her do tricks and obedience sits, downs, stay, come etc for her whole meal- each piece of kibble. 3) The type of food chosen for a pet is very individualistic. I avoid all grocery store brands and even tend to shy away from the large food warehouse brands. Good solid protein sources as main ingredients are what you want to look for.
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Chelle and the rest of the crew including, but not limited to Kita and Taiko (the shiba inu wrestle maniacs), Adi (reserved and dignified tabby cat), and all 28 reptiles www.freewebs.com/performanceshibas