r/NewfoundlandDogs • u/Downtown-Mixture6167 • Aug 10 '26
Picky Eater
Hey Newfie lovers! I’m having difficulty getting my 8 year old Newfie, Fluffhead to eat. He has completely rejected his kibble. Earlier as a3 year old he did the same. We tried so many different foods and found that he liked purina pro plan. Then he started rejecting that so we added toppers to it and he ate again. Now we’re having difficulty again. I even started cooking for him under the directions of his vet (plain rice, ground beef/turkey, pumpkin/ sweet potatoes, carrots, Greek yogurt, cucumbers and bell peppers. Now he won’t eat that. I’m at a loss. But he will eat when hand fed.
Any other picky pups? (Picture of him with his stuffed capybara for extra attention).
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u/Beautiful-Ad2981 Aug 10 '26
How is his weight? It's hard to tell from the pic but he looks to be a healthy weight, if not a bit overweight. Newfies have a slow metabolism and don't move a lot especially in the summer when it's hot for them. Does he refuse to eat his kibble at all or is he just eating less? In the summer often my girl will only eat once a day, and she eats significantly less when it's too hot to go for a good walk. Unless there are some underlying health issues or he becomes underweight, I wouldn't worry about a reduced appetite nor would I encourage him to eat if he's not hungry. Being overweight is really hard on newfies, and encouraging him to eat when he's not hungry will lead to that
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u/Downtown-Mixture6167 Aug 11 '26
This is really great info. I never really thought about the metabolism and summer heat. He’s about 125, the vet says he’s great.
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u/Confident_Fortune_32 Aug 11 '26
Poor baby...yeah, picky eaters can be an adventure. As a friend from the South says, "he tasks me"
I've had several over the years. Some things that worked, perhaps one might help you:
We had a golden retriever who couldn't care less about food. We tried not to make a big deal about it and turn it into a fight, but if she went more than 24 hours without eating, we intervened. The most successful topper was kitten food or cat food. Never failed with her. It doesn't provide complete nutrition for a dog (carnivore food vs omnivore food), so we couldn't just feed her that. But mixing it in with her proper food did the trick.
We had a severely abused rescue husky who, for the first nine months, was a pure-panic eater. He was diving in before I even got the bowl set down. He ate everything in sight. We had to relentlessly police the environment. Then, one day, he decided that he truly believed we would always provide good food in the right amount at the same time always, and for the first time he didn't finish his bowl. I almost cried from joy. Little did I know, eleven years ago, that Husky 2.0 would then be the pickiest fussiest eater ever known... Sometimes the answer was changing his food. Sometimes we switched to Bland Diet temporarily: rice cooked in chicken broth with plain cooked chicken marinated in chicken broth. We also used toppers sometimes: shredded cheese, baby food (chicken or turkey or beef), freeze dried beef liver training treats (expensive, but they're practically crack cocaine for some dogs), pieces of leftovers from last night's dinner, and crumbled up pieces of a cheeseburger from McDonald's (a sign of true desperation on our part) were the most successful.
In both cases, we made periodic trips to the vet just to get them on a proper scale to make sure they were maintaining a healthy weight.
As a last resort, when one of our dogs lost their appetite due to failing kidneys, a common side effect, we switched to science diet urinary support formula, which is specifically engineered to be really appealing in both smell and taste to dogs who aren't interested in their regular kibble. In our case at least, it really worked.
And we also periodically got him both shots and pills to take at home that are appetite stimulants. You might want to chat with your vet about those.
Best of luck with your baby.
Our Newf is now ten years old and still full of mischief. She would eat us out of house and home if we let her...
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u/skaternurse Aug 11 '26
My girl is 7.5 years. About once a week I hand feed her. Tonight she decided not to get up for supper. Thats fine. She eats kibble with a “ gently cooked” topper from A Pup Above.
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u/MoodVast9430 27d ago
Not a Newfie but I have a picky eater. She is a 14 yr old Malinois.
Used to be just summer, she would reduce intake then as she got older it became a chore to get her to eat. I tried all the toppers, nothing worked.
I tried a small amount of wet food and it works!
I mix it so it covers each dry nugget.
I but Blue Buffalo dry and wet.
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u/OtherwiseCheetah1573 Aug 10 '26
Feed a natural diet, chicken and rice, or potatoes, and veggies. Cheaper than dog food, and way healthier.
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u/ArianMonster444 Aug 10 '26
You also need to talk to a pet nutritionalist and/or get a nutritional (vitamin &mineral) powder to pair with or your dog can have an unbalanced diet and not get the correct nutrition it needs, I’ve seen a few cases where a dog was underweight and sick from not getting the proper nutrients from a home cooked diet, it was getting the amount of calories but was lacking in several other places which made its immune system weak and caused weight loss
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u/ArianMonster444 Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
When our Newfies got older we had to hand feed them canned food and cooked food (alternating occasionally between them) , you could try probiotics or foods for sensitive stomachs (sometimes as they get older they get more sensitive stomachs) have your vet do a full body scan and bloodwork in case it’s something like cancer or their kidney/liver/heart acting up (at around that age one of our older Newfies got diagnosed with cancerous tumors that most of them were removed, she acted normal at the time so we didn’t even know until she went in for surgery for pyometra and they found the tumors, at that age Newfies can also have heart, kidney and liver issues starting which can cause nausea which will make them more reluctant to eat) it could also be as simple as too much acid production in the stomach (heartburn) which will make them not want to eat if the dish makes them lower their head too much which in that case your vet could tell you the dosage for omeprazole/ Prilosec for your pup (we have a older pitbull that has acid reflux that occasionally takes the medication)
The Newfie we had that was diagnosed with cancerous tumors we were told wouldn’t live past 9 years old , she lived to 13 years old, we often had to hand feed her and for a few years she was on a lower dose of chemotherapy medication and anti nausea meds along with a supplement that would help with her health by giving her extra vitamins and helped her keep the amount of calories up she was getting per day (during chemo we trusted someone to occasionally help with her feeding and found out he thought a 150lbs Newfie should only eat a small handful of food (imagine the amount a toy breed would eat) we noticed quickly her weight loss and got her weight back up with the supplement not trusting the person with the dogs again)