Why Your Dog Suddenly Won't Eat (And What to Do About Fussy Eaters)

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining: Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.

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It's the Dog People Podcast with your host Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for some free dog training advice. You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like, I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things.

Yeah.

Go, oh my God, that's awesome. And then I get one like, oh my God, what the fuck? And Max O'Neill.

You would not believe how many people I meet and I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It's the Dog People Podcast, the podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout, it's okay, it's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence. Max O'Neill down at Dog Trainer. Anyone listening to the podcast for the first time, I am not a dog trainer, but I do have a dog who got me into dog training. Her name is Kira. She came to me as a foster. No one wanted her, so she stayed with me. She's a sort of a cattle cross GSP, we think. But, and we usually use her as fodder on this show, you know, because as I said in the past, the only reason I started this was to get free dog training advice from Max. And Max, we're at that point now because something interesting happened the other day and I wanted to bring it to you because I think I kind of know what's happening, but obviously you will know what's happening. So feeding Kira, she kind of gets a mix of raw and those logs. You know, people will know that you can see them wherever you go to the pet food store or even supermarkets. The raw sausage looking things. So she gets part of that and I mix that with like a raw egg, some sardines, and other bits and pieces that are raw that are lying around. Like if we've got some, some beef mince leftover that I know we're not going to eat it, or some salmon that maybe is A day out that we probably go, you know what? I'll just give that to the dog.

Yep.

So she gets all those bits and pieces when they're out. Anyway, so the other day, I don't know what happened. I think we were rushing out the door, and I didn't have all those extra bits. I just chopped her up the log, gave her a bit extra of it because she didn't have all the the nice little added extras, put it outside, and then we disappeared wherever we were going. Come back, and my wife goes. Did you know Kira's food's out here?

Yeah.

And I'm like, what? She's like, Kira's food bowl is out here full of food. I'm like, full of food? Because that's just— she just— that doesn't happen. I feed her once a day. She gets her full meal, obviously apart from training and stuff, she gets bits and pieces through the day, but mainly she gets her main meal at night. So she smashes it. When it comes, she's ready, she eats it all. And it was just all there. And I'm like, oh, that's weird. I'm like, that's never happened before. So anyway, I thought, well, okay, well, I'm just going to take that away and I'll bring it back out. 'Cause she's bound to be hungry at some point. So in the morning, instead of, you know, I didn't want to make her wait an entire another 24 hours to eat. So in the morning I brought it back out and she sort of had a nibble at it and she's like, nah, I'm not going to eat that. And then I think I suddenly realized what was going on. She's going, why is this so plain, bro? Where's my good shit? I'm not eating that. Where's, where's all the other stuff? Where's— so what I did do as a test was we had some sardines. So I mixed in a little bit of sardines and coated what was in there with the sardines and put that out. She smashed it. So I'm like, ah, okay. But you've got to be careful with this, don't you?

Yeah, definitely. So always seeing from there, figure like, look, if your dog suddenly goes off their meal, like every now and then they'll skip a meal and it's pretty normal for them to do their own version of intermittent fasting in the wild and just give their body a bit of a reset. Totally, totally normal. So if it's just happening in isolation like that, but if like Jack, you've noticed a pattern where your dog is refusing their food.

Because she did it the next night, by the way.

Yeah.

Even with the sardines in.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. So this is what's happening.

So if you've noticed a preference, your dog is refusing their food and going, hang on, there is something missing from this. I want you to add it. And then you add that back in. What starts to happen is like a whole world opens to your dog, like, Oh, if I knock back a meal, something gets upgraded. Something better comes. Something better comes. And what they don't understand is one, there's such a low ceiling on that. Like what, what, we can't add that much stuff. And 2, it's just not sustainable. I have some owners that do this and they go, oh yeah, we add cheese and this and this on top. And then eventually then how the dog's knocking back the cheese. So now we add sausage, but now the dog's knocking back and it just gets out of hand. The dog will enjoy it for a couple of days and then go, nah.

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Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as 2 days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com/startnow. That's growtherapy.com/startnow. growtherapy.com/startnow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

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Yeah, take it back. Bring me something else.

What's next? The worst case I've ever had of this was this dog. I can't remember what it was. It was a, a big dog, like a Mastiffy, something like that. And the owner had the most outrageous feeding routine she had to write down. And credit to the dogs, pretty smart dog, like it, it would remember every step-by-step process. She said he started knocking back like his kibble, so she bought some wet food and put wet food on top. And then a few days later, knocked back the wet food, and then she pretended to crack salt and pepper on top. And then She started knocking back that, so she added some cheese, then it knocked back that, she put on ketchup, knocked back that, she had to pretend to put it through the microwave, knocked back that. Like, it was this 10-step-long thing. And she goes, if I forget a step, I have to go back. She goes, oh, I'm so sorry, I forgot to put in the crust of bread. Like, and the dog would go, I'm not eating until I get that. But she'd go— so she actually called me out to go, have you got any other ideas of things I can put on my food to get him to eat?

She didn't want to know how to fix the problem. Is there anything else I can add to this that'll make the dog eat its food?

I was like, no, no, no, we're going to do this. And what we did with her was we just stripped it back to the kibble, popped it down. The dog was like, good one. I'm not eating that. And we went, cool. The moment the dog refused the bowl, we take it away. We serve it up the next mealtime. So that dog was on like 4 cups of food a day, 2 morning, 2 afternoon. We would only ever serve up 2 cups. So if it knocked back the morning, we don't give them 4 cups in the afternoon.

Yeah.

You only ever get 2 cups. If they ate 0 cup or 1 cup or 2 cup, they always then get 2 cups the next meal. And yeah, the dog starved itself out for, I think it was close to 3 days. It wouldn't touch it. I think it had maybe on day 2 it had a nibble of the kibble, had like 3 pieces and was like, ugh, not like that. And I should note this dog used to eat this kibble forever.

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It loved it.

Well, that's Kira. She would inhale this.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then I started adding because I thought, you know, I want to— because— and the reason I started adding things was because I took her to the vet for her shots and the vet was like, oh, I would like to see a little bit more on her in weight terms. And I was like, okay. So I started adding a few extras to, you know, the egg and a bit of, you know, all this sort of added sort of fatty stuff to put a bit of weight on. And that's where it started. She's like, oh, where's this come from? And then I take that away and she's like, well, hold on a second, where's that good shit gone?

Yeah.

And, and I did— it was so funny because what I did was one, because she did it the next day. With, and this time I did put the sardines on it and mix them in. And she did it the next day. I walked out there, she barely touched it and she walked back inside and I scolded her like I would a child and like she could understand me. I said, no, I said, you get back out there and you eat your food. And she walked back out and I shut the door on her and I buggered off, came back. She'd finished it.

She'd finished it.

Yeah. So she knows what she's doing. But it is, it's so funny. And I know I bang on about this all the time, but they are so like children because what do you, what do kids do all the time? They refuse their, like, you'll, you'll learn. I don't want spaghetti, I want fish fingers. Yeah. So you go, okay, get your fish fingers. And then they go, I don't want the fish fingers, I want this. So, you know, and what they always say you do is like, okay, well, I'm going to take that plate away. And for breakfast in the morning, guess what you're going to get? The dinner that you didn't eat last night. And we're going to— and I mean, I say this like I'm acting all tough. I don't do that with my children. I'm a sucker. But it is apparently what you should do with the children to force them to eat their food.

I'm taking notes as we speak.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, don't learn from me, that's for sure. Okay. So that's interesting. Well, so far, touch wood, We're back on track with Kira's eating, although she did get a bit fat.

If your dog is, you know, fussy with food and, you know, or low food drive or knocking back meals, the best way through it is scarcity, not novelty.

Well, see, but this is where I think people will struggle because instantly people go, well, I don't want to starve my dog. I don't want to— that's cruel. I don't want to not feed my dog. But your dog isn't going to die of starvation because when it's hungry, it will eat.

Well, yeah. And that's it. And the thing to understand is like, if our dogs were wild, is they're going to eat every day. Not every hunt's going to be successful. And in fact, there's times when they won't eat. I know when we were all feeding Nelson and he was having these big meals, there'd be one day a week where he'd just be like, I'm good, I just need it. I've had food all week. Yeah, I need a day to settle in.

My system needs to just—

And that's cool. And yeah, our dogs have grown accustomed to eating, you know, every day or a couple of times a day, but they're survivalists ultimately. Like, the longest a dog in captivity has not eaten for was something ludicrous like 100 and 7 days. And even at the end, it's an open-ended study because the dog apparently jumped a fence, got into a bin, and they're like, oh, we have to end it. But the dog was still fine after that amount of time. Now, don't get me wrong, the dog's probably like this absolute genetic outlier.

Yeah.

They just happened to study this freak survivalist. But if that's what the best can do, our dogs aren't that far off. So unless your dog is already like emaciated levels of skinny, a couple of days isn't going to hurt them. And like Jack said, it's like if they're that hungry, they're going to eat, particularly if it's a food we're dealing with that we know they like. But if you get into this rhythm of just finding something new and novel, like, as I go to people's houses all the time, they'll have 6 different bags of kibble that each cost $100 to $200 that the dog's gotten halfway through and decided isn't cool anymore. They've got, you know, 15 different bags of treats. So like, novelty will wear off eventually, and it's not the way through this. You just got to make it scarce and be like, that's what you're getting.

We should also make sure we put a caveat on this and say that Your dog not eating can also be a medical situation.

Yeah.

So that is also important to factor in other elements. Now, I knew from doing a bit of reading that, you know, the only thing that Kira was displaying was the fact that she didn't want to eat. She was— the bowel movements were fine, or she wasn't lethargic or anything like that, because obviously there can be obstructions and whatnot. So obviously if there's other underlying things, go and see a vet. But from— I know my dog and I know for a fact that she was just trying to play one on me and she's eating fine now.

Absolutely. Yeah. Please, please make sure it's nothing else more serious going on and listening to— we're assuming you've already kind of exhausted that.

Don't want calls saying my dog's dead because I didn't feed it for 20 days because you told me not to.

108 days. All right.

Any questions, as always, Dog People Podcast on Facebook. We'll get them answered for you. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence, And Max O'Neill. Edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.

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