What started as an Instagram post became too long-winded and needed a blog post of it's own and so today, we're talking dogs. More specifically, fussy eater dogs.
With all that's been going on at home in the past couple of years, Barney has developed a little anxiety. Mostly, this displays as him drinking excessively and then subsequently peeing excessively too. He's also developed a phobia of travelling, which started when I upgraded my car to my van. He got over it for a while but more upset and change brought it back on again and as such, we're currently trialling a new food, Royal Canin Calm.
The first thing I noticed about this food is that compared to what I was feeding (Tribal Senior), the portion sizes are much bigger. I remember when I first made the switch to Tribal years ago, I was really surprised by how small the portion sizes were for my boys (just 70g a day for Archie who weighs 5.5kg and 100g for Barney at 7.5kg). Barney has always been a fussy eater and finding a food that he would eat a whole portion of in one go was a blessing, because Archie is very food oriented and would hover around Barney's bowl, whining at anything Barney had left. Switching them to Tribal changed that and honestly, my relationship with Archie improved. Royal Canin Calm sees Barney requiring 140g a day and the kibble is much smaller and lighter than the Tribal pellets, which means Barney is now being offered a bowl full of biscuits, rather than the small portions he was used to.
I introduced the new food slowly among the chicken and rice Barney was having following an upset stomach so when he first had a full portion, he looked as though all his birthdays and Christmasses had come at once. He dived into the bowl, hoovering up great mouthfuls of kibble with enthusiasm I had never before seen from him! He gobbled up that first bowl full and afterwards staggered away in a doggie food coma. This continued for the first three days or so until (I assume) he realised that these bigger potions weren't a mistake on my part and that I wasn't about to take them away. For three weeks, he happily ploughed through his portions, sometimes taking a break halfway through and returning after a drink or a rummage through his toy box and as we neared the end of the first bag, I ordered a second. And almost as if he knew that I had just spent another small fortune on this medicated food, Barney lost interest.
I put his breakfast down one morning and watched as he approached it, saw what was in the bowl and went back to bed. The spell was broken. He visited his bowl numerous times that day and every time would snuffle up one or two biscuits, but no more. I like to think that I'm pretty good at reading Barney's body language and it seemed to me that he was still hungry but was put off by how many biscuits were in his bowl so I started offering him just a few biscuits at a time. This worked in the sense that he would happily eat a much smaller portion, but he wasn't interested in me refilling the bowl so I still couldn't get his daily requirement into him.
He'll eat more if I play with him, which is how he used to eat way back in the day. I once read (and I can't remember where but it was while I was at university) that cats prefer to hunt for their food and so domestic cats will play with their toys and "reward" themselves with food from their bowl. Barney certainly does this and as a very fussy eating youngster, I used to throw his ball for him past his bowl, which he would chase and on fetching it back would stop at his bowl for a mouthful of food. Effective, but time consuming.
I've come to the conclusion that Barney is over-faced by the portion sizes and it's something that I've seen in my clients too. I have met dogs who are allowed to graze from a large bowl full of biscuits all day long and they maintain their body weight by managing their own consumption. These dogs may have been slightly heavier than ideal, but they weren't massively overweight. I can only assume that they kept themselves comfortably full and ate when they were feeling peckish. Personally, as someone who does a lot of training with her dogs, I would rather be the one controlling my dogs diet as I use a lot of treats in my training and it's easier to reward a dog with food if it's not already full.
I suspect that the reason for dogs behaving this way around food is something to do with an abundance mindset. In the first few days of feeding Barney his new food, he was wolfing it down. It was like he was in a rush to eat it before I could take it away and within a few days of always receiving the bigger portions, he decided that this was the norm now and slowed down. In the wild, dogs and cats don't know when their next meal is coming from and so will eat as much as possible when the opportunity arises. This innate instinct is still there under the surface. Having plenty of food available to him has made it less valuable to Barney whereas the smaller portions he was having of Tribal were small enough to keep him interested and he never left a bowl of Tribal unfinished.
We're almost two months into our trial of Royal Canin Calm and I've decided that we won't be continuing with it because I simply cannot get Barney to eat enough of it although I must admit that Barney's behaviour at home has changed since he's been on it. However, medicated foods take a little while to work and I began to see a difference in Barney's behaviour immediately which leads me to think that it is the other things that we've been doing that have impacted his mood and not necessarily the food. With my vets support, I started taking away the water bowl to break the habit Barney had gotten into of drinking too much which in turn resolved the excessive weeing. Making changes to my own stress levels and managing my own mood has had an impact as well as it's no secret that dogs are very empathic creatures.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the one behaviour that has changed and that I do think is linked to the calm food, given the timeline. Barney has started humping his toys again. Looking back, I can't remember when Barney stopped humping his toys as it is something I always dissuaded him from doing after a particularly vigorous session lead to a urine infection a few years ago. I don't remember him trying to do it in the time since we moved our of our old house two years ago, which makes me wonder if his loss of libido is related to the stress of all the life changes we've been through recently. It can happen to humans so why not dogs too? I noticed his renewed interest in his toys after we'd finished the first bag of Calm food so the timing lines up.
Fun fact: Barney is named after Barney Stinson - Neil Patrick Harris's character in How I Met Your Mother - because of how much he humped things as a puppy! Image credit: Google images
So what are our options as the owners of fussy eaters?
Feeding little and often is an option but if you were asking my advice, I would recommend switching your dog onto a more nutrient-dense food like Tribal (not a sponsor, just a fan) so that they are getting everything they need in a much smaller portion size. I wrote in Going Tribal about how I came to chose Tribal over other brands but one of the benefits is that because it's cold pressed, the kibble doesn't swell in water the same way other biscuits do. This means that if you add water to it, it turns into a paste which is great for stuffing Kongs with but also means that older dogs who struggle with hard biscuits won't have any issues with Tribal. My main reason for feeding Tribal is the level of joint support offered by the Senior food (again see: Going Tribal) and I genuinely believe that this is contributing to how well Archie is ageing. At the grand old age of 13 and a half, Archie is as spritely today as he was at 5. More so actually.
Owning a fussy eater is frustrating, even more so if you own more than one dog and the other one is a gannet. Although brands like Tribal are at the more expensive end of the scale, being able to feed smaller portions means that a bag of it lasts longer than cheaper alternatives and the peace of mind that comes with being able to put down a bowl of food and know your dog is going to finish it before their sibling steals it is worth the extra cost in my opinion.
Other owners of fussy eaters have had success with puzzle feeders, snuffle mats, feeding from treat balls, hand-feeding, allowing the dog to graze, adding dog-gravy to make kibble more appealing, but I have not yet heard anyone talking about the impact of portion size. So if I may throw one more tip into the mix, it's this: reduce the portion size by feeding a higher quality food.
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