Sometimes.
My two aussiedoodles have very different looks and temperaments despite being the same mix. Grizzly will eat just about anything on a normal day–except for rice, he won’t eat rice.
Ranger on the other hand has been super picky for as long as I can remember, especially in the morning. While I would love to follow the “eh, if he’s hungry he’ll eat” mentality I can’t. If Ranger doesn’t eat he get nauseous and vomits. On my rugs. So we have to make sure he eats at least a little bit in the mornings, which can be really difficult some days.
We’ve found that even if he loves one type of food and scarfs it down one day, he may reject it the next. He gets bored. Easily. He’s a spoiled brat.
Who, me?
Yes, you.
In the past we have been able to get him to eat by putting toppers on his kibble. This has been things like: steak, salmon, rice, Stella & Chewy’s Magic Dust (this has had a good run of working pretty well), and of course cheese. Usually shredded Mexican cheese. Ranger is allergic to chicken and eggs so we can’t give him anything with those ingredients, unfortunately.
But lately he’s been refusing even all those delicious toppers! So we’ve been feeding him Stella & Chewy’s Dinner Patties (Surf & Turf flavor). They are these pretty gross looking gray freeze dried raw hockey puck things. We break them apart into smaller pieces (because he’s our princess, obviously) and put them on top of some kibble. These have had a good run of working well, and he’ll often eat the kibble too, though often he just eats the pucks off the top. It’s not fool-proof, and he’s started to be less interested in them but so far we’ve had the best luck with these.
Just for the record, I have no relationship with Stella & Chewy and they had nothing to do with this post. If they wanted to send me some free stuff, though, that’d be nice. Hint, hint.
I think the raw freeze dried foods are just the most desirable to dogs in general and there are lots of other brands that sell this sort of thing. They have a strong smell and are super unappealing to me, but they seem to love the freeze dried treats we give them too. The pucks are much softer than kibble, too, so as they age and their teeth become more fragile it’s a good food to move over to.
We’ve tried a variety of wet foods, too, but he’ll only eat them once and then reject them after that. Doesn’t make any sense to me but I’m not a dog.
Please share your tricks for picky eaters in a comment, while the pucks have been great it’s hard to believe he won’t eventually get bored and we’ll need another option. If you have an aussiedoodle, do also let me know if you’ve found your dog to be a picky eater or not!
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