My puppy has gone off their food

Learn about normal eating behaviours

“How much to feed my puppy?” – the hardest thing ever, isn’t it?

You start off well, measuring and monitoring, feeding like the breeder told you to. But then your puppy grows and grows and you need to increase their food portions but you don’t want a fat puppy. So you increase the food by a little and then increase again when your puppy becomes a stone eating / snail eating / soil eating / plant eating monster.

Then almost over night they stop eating. They leave some food or look at you as if you are giving them a bowl of poison.

There are several reasons why your puppy may stop eating. The most common is teething; at around 11- 13 weeks, those first bottom two teeth fall out, closely followed by the top ones and then the large bigger canines. At this point in their development you will see some changes in their behaviour:

• more chewing on hard items
• reluctance to be touched around the face / avoidance of head touches
• chewing on unwanted items such as slippers or wooden things
• reluctance wearing the head harnesses
• not wanting to eat

Food becomes tainted with discomfort. Kibble becomes much more tricky to eat due to the crunch on sore gums. So you give them lots of tasty stuff and now this is all they want to eat.

Here are our top tips for how to successfully feed your puppy

1. Remove the bowl

Feeding in a different location or using a different utensil can make a big difference. Licki mats or Kongs which can be refrigerated can really help soothe those gums. Dogs love to work a little for food but food in a bowl becomes boring after a while.

Watch our video on interactive feeding here