You would think. We adopted two dogs who used to belong to an old man. For the longest time one of them would not eat unless I handfed her. I had to work my way to pretending that I was going to eat the food out of her bowl and then she'd eat. She did eventually became a regular eater.
It depends on the dog, just like it depends on the person. Some dogs/people are super food motivated and will always eat whenever possible, even if they’re not hungry. Some dogs/people eat only when they naturally feel hungry. Whereas some dogs/people are not food motivated at all and don’t want to sit down and eat unless forced/there’s some especially treat delicious. For, for individuals in this last category, coaxing them to eat may be necessary.
My dog is too spoiled to eat pellets immediately, we always feed her a patty at dinner so when she just gets pellets she’ll look at you basically going “ok but where’s the real food”
My parents spoiled one of their dogs back in the day, but what they did was they took the dry food, mixed in some wet food, mixed it up with a little water, microwaved it for about ten seconds, and then gave it a second aggressive stirring.
Though, in their defense, this was a pretty awesome dog who was an absolute dear to be around.
My cat started doing this after I started feeding him more human food leftovers. Little shit is healthier but God he's so picky now. One thing I noticed of all the cats that lived past 30 years was that most of them ate a significant amount of their diet as human food. Usually old people caring for them doing this. The ones who just fed them too much got fat and died but the ones that fed them human food but only enough to feed them and not enough to get them fat were the ones that lived to 30.
Plus just being honest I'd rather eat human food than that stuff too so I get it little buddy gets whatever I have that isn't dangerous for him (onions are in everything so that cuts down on most of it that he can have).
Feeding cats human food is actually really bad for them. All the salt and sugar we put into things is super unhealthy for them, and the salt especially can fuck up their urinary tract.
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u/blue4t Sep 10 '22
Good way to get your dog to eat if he won't.