[Tibbi-Pom]

Hi :wave:
I came here to ask what you would recommend;;

I have a Tibetan Spaniel, she is 5 this year, she is an extremly picky eater, and thin.. you can feel all her ribs and every bump of her back bone..
She is really picky and doesn't like hard food, but she doesn't do well on canned food, and it's very expensive.

Right now she is on what the vet continusly reccomends us ( Purina ONE Healthy Puppy Formula ) high fat and protein..
And she has been on it for about a year or so and she hasn't gained any weight, and is lossing interest in eating it..

Any sugestions for my skinny, PICKY dog?

Looking forward to nice suggestions.

 

[Amaryllis]

What about raw feeding? We have a lot of threads on that here. If not raw, then go to dogfoodadvisor.com and pick out a 4 or 5 star food. They also make premade raw you can buy and just measure out her portion instead of giving her a raw chicken wing. (It's best to just do the chicken wing, but not everyone is comfortable with it or able to do that.)

As to feeling her ribs/spine, you should be able to feel that to an extent. Make your hand into a fist. Feel along your knuckles. Do her ribs feel like that? Now relax your hand and feel along the same knuckles. Her ribs should feel like the relaxed hand. If they feel like the fist, that's a problem.

ETA: Are her teeth okay? Most dogs like to chew on things, I would suspect some sort of tooth problem if she doesn't.

 

[PackMomma]

I would suggest raw, or maybe a dehydrated raw. Purina isn't a very good food, unless of course your dog does well on it, in which case your's isn't so I don't recommend it.

Since your dog doesn't seem to like or do well on any commercial processed foods, I'd strongly suggestion looking into raw. Just my two cents.

 

[Kathyy]

Raw is definitely the best and most dogs take to it right away.

You don't have to feed kibble or canned though. You could just mix in a little of the canned with the kibble. She might like that better than dry food. There are lots of incredibly interesting canned foods out there. Venison, beaver, green tripe, buffalo, rabbit...... If they work out you could freeze dollops on a cookie sheet so she could have a different flavor mixed with every meal.

Or you could mix in a little fresh food with the kibble. Max gets the scrapings from the morning's egg pan whenever we have that for breakfast mixed with some water for 'egg drop soup'. Or you could cut up that dried up pork chop nobody wants to eat. Or save a little of the meat you were putting into spaghetti sauce, cook it up and mix with the kibble. Just a little to flavor the kibble is fine. If there is quite a bit of the fresh food then cut back on the kibble.

Perhaps the size of the kibble annoys her, there are some tiny kibbles out there. Perhaps she would prefer to be fed off a different dish, Sassy hated her tags banging on the metal bowl and much preferred a low wide dish. Perhaps she would like it from a food puzzle so she has to work to get it, my sister's dog loved being fed that way but took forever to eat if it was in a dish.

I like my dogs lean and want to be able to easily feel all the ribs and vertebrae and breastbone and shoulder bones. I just don't want to see a dip between the hip bones and some dogs are at a healthy weight with that dip.

Like the fist rib test Amaryllis, have to remember that one.

 

[gingerkid]

Have you tried soaking her kibble? Snowball isn't a fan of his food when its not soaked (he'll eat it, sometimes) but if we soak it in a bit of water, even halfway, he gobbles it down.

Even though I'm a relatively new dog owner, I second getting your dog off Purina. Why is she on the Puppy formula? If its for high protein, there are lots of other dog foods that are high in protein and higher in quality as well.

I also second looking into different varieties. Snowball is "eh" when it comes to poultry or red meat-flavoured treats, he's indifferent about his lamb-flavoured food, but he LOVES salmon flavoured treats so we're going to try a salmon variety once his current bag is done. There's nothing wrong with switching foods if your dog doesn't like it. Try buying a small bag, or perhaps write to different companies to see if they'll send you some samples.

 

[InkedMarie]

I would find a high quality kibble, find a high quality canned, mix it together with a little water.