[HeatherDawne]

Well to make the long story short-- I have a male dog that is about a year old and a female dog that just hit her first heat. Well needless to say he will not leave her alone so we are pretty sure she is pregnant. Now the problem is that he is so busy watching over her and protecting her that he will NOT eat! He lets her eat all the food so we decided to separate them but he still isn't eating. To make matters worse--we can't just try to appeal to his appetite with table scraps or anything like that because he has Irritable bowel syndrome.
What do we do to get our guy to eat?

[wildandblue]

It's natural for him to spend all of his energy on breeding behavior and not to eat. It's the fight or flight reaction. He's ready to fight off any competition and that's depressing his food intake. If he's of normal weight he can live off the energy stores in his muscle mass. Eventually he'll settle back into his old routine.

[tickle]

wildandblue has the right idea. Your dog will start eating once he knows there is no more competition; then everything will return to normal. He will definitely eat when he is hungry.

[wildandblue]

You know we guys only think of one thing at a time. He sounds like a great prospect as a dad. Hope the pups take after him!