I have a 1 year old Siberian Husky puppy who has become extremely picky about his food (garbage on the street is obviously good enough for him, though).
He's started eating a mere fraction of the food he used to eat. I understand that as they reach full size they decrease how much they eat, but some days he doesn't eat at all.
I took him to the vet, and she said everything was fine with him. I stopped giving him treats and convinced my boyfriend to stop giving him treats (sometimes he likes to give my dog small pieces of bread) and still, my dog did not each much.
I am currently feeding him Origin dog food, because I heard from many people that it is an excellent brand of pet food.
I am not concerned that he is unhappy, mad, or anything like that. He's not overly skinny. I just want to get him food that he's more excited about eating!

Does anyone have any recommendations on dog food that he might like? I tried getting sample bags for him to try, but my pet food store does not offer them. I was considering getting him wet food, but was driven off by the cost, and the fact that dry food has many benefits (such as helping with teeth cleaning, for example)

Welcome to the 12 month hunger strike.

A lot of dogs will completely go off their food at 1 year of age, I have just been through it with one of mine, it took until he was nearly 18 months to start eating properly again.

I wouldn't go changing foods, I did it myself and it did no good. If you like you can try adding something like mashed up sardines (just the canned ones in oil) and mix it through his dry food, but other than that don't be too worried.

Mine was visibly skinny, you could actually see the bumps in his spine, that's when I started to panic and bought all these yummy foods for him... nope still did no good, he eat again when he was ready.

Put some low sodium chicken broth on his dry dog food.

My second Great Dane did the same thing Shaz mentioned.

When he gets hungry enough, he'll eat. Don't worry.

When you say low sodium chicken broth, do you mean the powdered chicken broth, or the liquid stuff (or either.. )

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Originally Posted by katieokell

when you say low sodium chicken broth, do you mean the powdered chicken broth, or the liquid stuff (or either...?)

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I used some of the canned stuff. The powdered stuff is usually very high in sodium. No need to dry him out.

Or as Shaz will tell you herself, you can boil some chicken for him and give him the meat, and save the broth and pour it over his dry food.

If you're really worried, get him some high quality, higher protein, canned dog food. The more expensive, trusted, name brands.

If the vet says he's OK, I wouldn't worry so much though.

As a owner of two huskies myself I more then know where you are coming from. My girls are some of the pickiest eaters I have ever known and I have had to deal with multiple hunger strikes, especially by one of them. She has a tendency to get "bored" of her dog food after a couple of months and not be interested in it anymore and start refusing to eat.

One way that helps to get them to eat is canned food, which as you said can be expensive. What I often do is mix some canned in with the dry to stretch out a can a little farther and still have the dry to help with teeth cleaning and such.

They also have bags of liquid flavoring stuff that you can pour over the food, however the stuff is a bit costly.

I have read somewhere that a healthy dog doesn't need to eat every single day. I think it stated that after 5 days is when you really want to start worring about if something is wrong.

To entice a dog to eat without buying canned food and dousing it with treats, cook it. Put his amount on the stove and heat it up. The heat releases all the oils in the food and makes it smell great (to the dog).

Also, feeding such a high protein
"alternative to the raw diet" may just mean that all his nutritional needs have been met so therefore he doesn't need to eat all the time. Dogs won't starve themselves out. They eat when they need to. Just always offer his food, maybe even leave it down, he might be the type of dog that would rather pick at it all day then two meals at a time. My mom's dog doesn't eat every time we feed, and she's perfectally healthy. You may also have to increase his exercise routine. If he's not burning the calories then he won't be needing to eat as much.

I agree with you love a bull, but I have to admit, raw diets is not my speciality.

I have heard that when feeding a complete raw diet you feed from Monday to Saturday and then do not feed the dog on a Sunday.

To be honest, I don't know the benefits of that, it's just something I have read, never tried, I was umming and arring about feeding raw but couldn't find any solid evidence why it was better.

I have read significant evidence that raw diets for humans is much better, and I have a friend that is on an extremely strict raw food diet and has much to say about it.
However, I have not read anything at all about raw food diets for dogs. It makes sense to a certain extent - native 'dogs' or their wolf/canine ancestors would have eaten all their food raw. However, dogs have been bread for centuries, and would have adapted to their environment and learned to deal with cooked food, perhaps to the extent that they are now better able to deal with cooked food than raw food.

Not a big fan of the raw diets either. A friend of my moms had a dog get surgery because it got a chicken bone lodged in its throat. Not only is it expensive, but you have to add a lot of vitamins to it anyway for the dog to actually benefit from it. And, did I mention it was expensive :) But the Orijin and Evo are raw diet alternatives. If you run out of the raw diet foods, those high quality foods are a great inbetweener!

I've been through this with my husky too ;). When he was a puppy he would eat so much. He would just keep eating, until it made him sick, if you allowed it. Once he reached a year or so, he became very picky.

He's now 4yrs old and he's still picky. If the vets have checked your pup out though don't worry. Like I said my dog is now 4 and still like that, he eats very little. Like others said though if he's hunry he'll eat.

So what I do is leave my dog's dish out the whole day, that way he can pick at it when he wants.

Like I said don't worry most huskies(well the ones I know) are like this. Just make sure your pup has food all the time, and water of course and he'll be fine.

Good Luck :)