Feeding and fussy skinny 9 month old lab???

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CherryB

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Appologies for the and' (ment to be 'a') in the title!
Hi everyone
My dog nutrition knowledge is very poor so i need some advice!!
I have a 9 month old lab with a V poor appitite. She has always been like this since we had her at 8 weeks, although she has gone through stages of eating more when she was growing.
She is quite skinny, to the point she looked like a cross breed (and definately doesn't have the appitte of a typical labrador!! however is still very active (ALL the time!) but eats very little, i feel like ive tried everything...lots of different types of food (changed gradually etc) sticking to the same food for a couple of months, feeding little and often, feeding 2 bigger meals a day, extra walks in an attempt to work up an appetite, adding in more flavour, different left over meats but nothing seems to be working.
She sometimes even ignors the food totally when its put down for her, and other times she just picks at it eating very little. the only way we have found to make her eat is to cook chicken and break it up into tiny pieces and mix it in, however she still tries to just pic the chicken out. If its got something new in her food she will always eat the new stuff for about 2 days, then goes bck to eating nothing as if she gets bored.
Can any body sugget anything that might help...apart from just feeding her pure chicken all the time!!

any advice much appriciated as considering taking her to the vet if it doesn't improve!! x
 
Try giving her a really good quality probiotic, like Protexin. A probiotic will increase her uptake of vitamins and minerals from the food she IS eating and it will increase her appetitie. We had a GSD that jsut wasn't that fussed on eating and we gave her a double dose of Protexin Premium (which is a yeast based one for horses :-) and within a couple of weeks she was eating everything we gave her and had put on weight.
 
My lurcher was a bit like this when I first got him. I think I made the mistake of fussing over him too much trying to make him eat and tempt him like you describe (grated cheese for Oscar :rolleyes:). What really improved him in the end was leaving a huge bowl of dry food down all the time so he could eat ad lib. He maintained a lovely weight and it really took the stress out of it all.

Actually he did create his own mealtimes - after his morning walk and as soon as OH came home at night.

We did go back to meals in the end (ad lib categorically DOESN'T work with a greedy JRT :p) but he will still stop eating even now if I go and look in on him at mealtimes so now I just figure if he is hungry he eats, if he isn't he won't and it will even out in the end. BTW I have followed the same principles with my son and he is a really good eater - I don't give him kibble tho :eek:
 
thanks for the advice, i will definately look into the probiotic. And we have tried just leaving a huge bowl down and she does eventually eat most of it but im just not sure if its as much as she should be. maybe im worrying too much!
 
CherryB said:
thanks for the advice, i will definately look into the probiotic. And we have tried just leaving a huge bowl down and she does eventually eat most of it but im just not sure if its as much as she should be. maybe im worrying too much!
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You could try taking her average intake over a week instead. Oscar will vary hugely in the amount he eats day to day depending on exercise, weather, mood, distractions etc.

Oh and the important thing with ad lib feeding is to always keep the bowl topped up. Just count the number of scoops you put in each week. Cheer up and relax - if you find her meals stressful then she will pick up on it :)
 
RAW RAW RAW your boat gently down the stream!

Sorry but anyway have you thought about raw feeding.
Chuck her a chicken leg and see if she'll eat that.

I have not had a dog turn down RAW feeding, sometimes takes them a while to get use to it and some dogs are lazy and it takes them ages to get use to it but they do and they thank you for it as well, with a healthier life and a quater of the amount of poop!
 
If she is otherwise fit and well, lively and happy, I really wouldn't worry too much. I have never known a dog starve itself,at 9 months my dogs are often quite skinny. It would definitely be worth giving a raw diet a try, but don't pander to her by swapping foods all the time it will just make her more fussy.
 
I'm with MM, most dogs are skinny at 9mo :) they're big lanky teenagers and I'd rather have a skinny than a tubby.

You can add tuna with sunflower oil, yummy, and good for the coat too.
 
Sometimes with a single dog you can find it very difficult to get them to eat anything they don’t really like, the competitive edge with two or more dogs really helps!!

She obviously and in my biased opinion sensibly dislikes the commercial food! With a fussy one you might even have to be crafty with raw feeding. As she is eating cooked chicken I would start with some diced chicken that is literally just browned, and then try mixing in some raw minced or diced chicken. Eggs are a really good source of food too so you could start with runny slightly cooked until she gets the taste. Once she is away you can then introduce chicken on the bone, start with something small and relatively soft like Supermarket drumsticks then once she is eating those you are away and can get to buying cheap carcasses. You can do the same with offal, slightly brown it and also introduce things like sheep’s hearts and lamb bones and meat.

Oh and forgot then you can go onto CC's fav, huge turkey legs.!!

But I would offer her the food and if she wont eat it after a while put it back in the fridge and offer the same food few hours later, so it’s that or nothing.

Being skinny you need to feed slightly more muscle meat until she looks a little more lab like as she grows up into a walking stomach (only joking) you can increase the bone content to stabilise the weight, But the bone is the key part of the diet and chicken bones have all the nutrients she needs to support steady growth.
 
thaks fo the replies, its causing arguement in our house now and my dad is insisting on feeding her (she my dog not a family dog! ) because im doing a rubbish job apparently! :( he is doing everything people have said not to so im going to print this off and show him it and make him leave me to it!
 
My lab was a skinny and fussy 9 month old and now he's a skinny and fussy 7 year old :) He's perfectly healthy and the vet is happy with him, we just have to put up with people asking what he's crossed with...
 
Another vote for tuna in sunflower oil. It's one of the only things I can get my fussy eater to eat when we go away shooting as she gets so excited.

She also likes a soft boiled or scrambled egg!! :p

And her current favourite, that her little nose goes mad for, liver!! She is crazy for it! Although I can't stand the smell of it! Blurgh!
 
Forget any dry food..I mean would YOU eat it day in day out? Go over to raw on the bone (BARF) We feed whole chook carcases,fat dogs get one ,any thinner ones get two or three.Don`t make an issue about it..dogs sense this all too well. If it takes letting her chew away at a chook carcase in a corner of the garden,,so be it. Another huge fav with any fussy ones is a huge bowl of pasta twirls with a small tin of sardines in oil scrunched into it..yummy.Never can resist a spoonful myself!Don`t overface the dog with endless food food food...let it eat it`s fill,then a goodly period of empty tum till the next feed.
 
Oh the woes of having a picky dog, my whippetX has been like this ever since i've had her at 3yrs old and she's now 14yrs. I've had to learn not to worry about it and just her TBH. She just isn't fussed about food (apart from human food!!). She has improved recently since we've put her onto James wellbeloved pouches on top of dry kibble (she has Harringtons turkey + veg) with added water, she can't pick with this so much. Some days though she just goes and lies under the table and won't look at her bowl. She's had all the tests etc etc but it's just her I'm afraid xx
 
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