Hi Shannon

Once again, and as always, your article on aggression while eating I found very interesting, but this time I would like to put a question to you. I have an imported Toy dog that I am showing at the moment. He arrived at the age of 15 months but refused to eat out of a bowl. Most times he refuses to eat completely, except out of my hand. I have tried not to feed him at all he but then he will skip eating for up to 3 days. In desparation, I give up and feed him by hand again. He is now 18 months and I am still battling with him because he loses weight whilst not eating. I now have a bitch in season and it is even worse. What can I do to rectify this problem? I am scared that one day I will not be at home for a while then he will most certainly starve.

Thanks once again for the lovely articles and advice.

Kind regards
Worried

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Dear Worried,

The very first thought that comes to mind is health. I am pretty sure that you would have already had that train of thought, but for the benefit of our more novice readers I would like to state the basic procedure when faced with sudden appetite loss in their dogs.

When a dog's behaviour suddenly changes, it is more often than not a situation of health being the cause. In the case of appetite loss, the first wise action is to have the dog thoroughly checked by a vet. The check may also be for chronic conditions and may include x-rays, blood panels, smears etc. There are numerous acute causes for appetite loss, such as broken teeth, mouth wounds, intestinal obstruction, nausea, fever etc.

However in this case this dog has apparently always displayed this behaviour and in the absence of a medical trigger we can safely assume the cause to be behavioural.

It would appear that this problem is a combination of genetics and learned behaviour:

Genetics

Toy breeds often present with behaviour problems quite unlike those of larger breeds. Due to deliberate selection for a smaller size (which is most contradictory to natural selection) individuals that may not have been naturally viable are propagated. Unfortunately fashions and exaggerations aggravate this situation. These naturally unviable dogs tend to have an inherent lower instinct for self-preservation. They are sometimes hand-raised which further compounds the problem.

In the same vein, the smaller litters that occur with Toy breeds mean less competition amongst littermates. To illustrate my point, it is very rare to have low appetite as a problem in one of the larger breeds. When a puppy has had to compete with eight or ten littermates since birth, it tends to develop a more possessive approach to resources throughout his life.

So you should aim to give him some competition when feeding, which will hopefully trigger some kind of possessive behaviour. Employ one of your other dogs that has a good appetite, but not a bossy dog as this would have the opposite effect. You can feed by hand initially. Place some food on your hand and offer it to the male. Try and restrain the other dog, but let it see the food and get excited about it. "Accidently" let go of the other dog and let it eat the food. You can even say something like: "Oh no. Too late, you missed out".

Watch the male carefully for any signs of aggression. If he has very low food drive he should not behave aggressively, but it is wise to be cautious. Hopefully after a couple of repetitions he'll realise he is losing out. Allow him to "win" sometimes, but don't let him get every piece. This should build his food drive. If he were to win every piece then the motivator (competition) is lost.

If this is successful you should be able to transfer this procedure to a bowl on the ground using the same principle, but not actually allowing the other dog to get the food. You can place your hand in the bowl initially. If it looks like he may be leaving the bowl, allow the other dog a bit closer. Once the feeding is complete please give the other dog a discrete treat, as we don't want to create a negative or possessive problem in the "competition dog".

Please bear in mind that we may actually be creating a problem in order to resolve a problem. i.e. we are actually teaching him to be a possessive eater so that he will eat. This is not ideal, but hopefully you will strike a happy balance between low and high food possessiveness.

Learned Behaviour

No healthy dog will willingly starve himself to death. However this clever little guy has figured out that if he holds out for long enough he gets you to cave in. Caving in just once will strengthen the behaviour immeasurably. He obviously finds it more enjoyable to eat from your hand than out of the bowl and he has learned what to do to effect this change in your behaviour. He has also probably learned that if he shows disinterest that the stakes (pardon the pun) are raised. Coaxing with delicious food only reinforces this manipulative behaviour.

Normally I would suggest a "tough love" approach. In other words you offer him food in the bowl and leave it and him alone. You come back in five minutes and take the bowl away irrespective of whether he has eaten or not. After a couple of days he will eat any food placed in his bowl. However you have gone down this road and it was not successful (in fact he came out tops), so let's go with another approach.

First of all no food should be left down during the day at all. All this does is negate the value of the food. Prior to a meal have about 15 minutes of light to moderate activity such as walks with a bit of trotting. This should prepare him on a physiological level to eat.

To get him eating food per se, I would suggest using some kind of tasty treat that the dog has never had before. However it must be given to all the dogs otherwise we are back to square one. Perhaps drying out liver and crushing into powder and sprinkling on the food? Maybe a bit of natural yoghurt or some dirty tripe?

Whatever he doesn't finish you take away and make a big show of giving it (and the resulting attention) to the other dogs. If he tries to push in then to get some food or attention make a big effort to ignore him and although it will be tempting do not give him any food. It will only take a couple of repetitions of this before he realises that not only does not eating his food mean it gets taken away, but in a bizarre twist the other dogs get his food and his attention.

This is a hard approach, but his health is more important than a slightly bruised ego.

I have heard claims of alfalfa and vitamin B increasing appetite, but this should be checked with your vet. Likewise there are some drugs available that stimulate appetite in dire situations and a vet would be the best person to speak to about this.

Best of luck

Shannon