I have been having a hard time getting my husky Turbo to eat! He has kennel cough and has to take 2 pills twice daily, once after breakfast, once after dinner, we have switched his food coutless times, slowly mixing them like your supposed to. he only eats about 3/4 the of a bag then wont touch it unless bribed with treats, which i dont WANT to, but have to or he will not eat, which means he cant take his medicine. i dont know what to do. please leave any tips you may think will help.

well it could be the brand of the food or he is just getting tired of it. Huskies generally dont each much as it is so what i do is i leave a bowl of 1 cup of food if nala eats it she eats it if not then she doesnt trust me you cant force a husky to do anything he or she doesnt want to do.

How much are you feeding Turbo and what kind of food? Kenzi doesn't eat much, about a cup and half every day or so. When we moved she stopped eating altogether for a few days and I had to mix canned dog food in with her kibble to get her to eat. I have also poured chicken broth and gravy over her food to get her to eat.

Typical husky behaviour, it's a battle wills that you have to be the winner. Mine went on hunger strike for 4 days once, I didn't give in and if he didn't eat his food it was removed and nothing was offered until the next meal time. This is important, during his little strike DO NOT offer any treats or alternatives and remember that a healthy dog will not starve itself.
If however you must give tablets then maybe feed the tablet in some peanut butter or extra virgin coconut oil although not an ideal situation in the whole strategy of winning the battle of wills but needs must.

Yeah I agree. Just hold out, I've had to do this with Siku. Unless he is having a problem with the food as far as the poops go and he started eating it in the beginning then just let him pout it out. After you finish the whole bag, you can change his food so you are not always feeding the same thing, but huskies aren't huge eaters and trust me when he is hungry he will eat as long as their are no other underlying issues.

i dont recommend mixing with soft food becus the pup will then get used to the soft food and stop eating again once it is taken away. i personally dont like soft food for dogs it makes them gain alot of weight and it is not as good for them. the hard food is good for their teeth.

ok thanks everyone i will try my best workig on this.

Dizzy is currently on a duck protest. I have offered him the same meal 3 days straight and he will eat a small amount and try to hide what he doesn't want. I just keep offering it to him and will until it's gone.

Here is what you do
Offer food at the normal morning feed time. Wait 30 minutes. If the food has not been eaten, take it and put it away.

Wait 3-4 hours. Offer the food again. Wait 20 minutes. If the food has not been eaten, take it and put it away.

Wait 5-6 hours (dogs have a strange sense of time they will know you waited longer this time) Wait 10 minutes. If the food has not been eaten, take it and put it away.

It should be around 5-6 O'Clock at this point. Offer food one last time before you go to bed. If your dog doesn't try to eat within the first couple of minutes take it and put it away.

Do this exact routine the next day. I PROMISE your dog will not starve himself. I made a stupid mistake of putting some meds the vet wanted Okami to take into her food to see if she would eat it, and she didn't eat for 2 days. I did this routine and she ate eventually. Don't change your brand of food or treat because of this refusal to eat. This will just teach him that if he holds out he will get different tasting/ lavish food or rewarded for not eating.... bad habits if you ask me. If you toughen up, so will he.

I'm not familiar with kennel cough meds... can you use "pill pockets" for them? They are tasty soft treats where the pills fit inside so the dog gulps it down without thinking. My best friend used to slather their pills in peanut butter for their dog, or roll them up in a bit of lunch meat.

As far as food goes... how long does it take you to get through 3/4 of the bag? When I worked in a petstore they warned us that after a couple of weeks (2-3) an opened bag of dog food could become stale, the oils in the kibble could turn rancid, and the vitamins start to degrade. So we should never recommend a bag that couldn't be finished in a month, preferably less. If you can open a fresh bag of the same dog food, and he'll eat it, he may be disliking the taste of the dog food when it's not as "fresh".

At that point you can try sealing it in a rubber maid like container...or just getting smaller bags of food?

/at least he's not a cat. A cat will literally starve itself to death in a battle of wills over foods it likes (due to some specific cat biology around it's digestive tract, they can't go empty for too long or they can't start back up.) Haven't heard of a dog doing that thankfully.

So digging up this thread because Diz is once again not eating. How long do I wait him out? It's been since Friday since he last ate a full meal. I expected him not to eat Saturday because we went to a dog show and he ate tons of treats, but nothing yesterday and nothing this am. I keep offering him the same food and got him to eat a little of it yesterday with hand feeding, but not much. I sent him to daycare today and I'm hoping that with the energy expenditure of playing he'll break down and eat tonight.

I can tell he's hungry, this morning he was wandering around checking all his hiding places to see if he could find a pig ear or duck foot stashed. He was also eye balling the cat food to a pretty high degree. Luckily I picked up all his stashed stuff last night so he found nothing.

So how long do I wait him out? He's still drinking, and peeing, and had a small but firm poop last night. He is lower energy than normal and kinda whiny and grumpy, but I attributed that to lack of food and wanting something better...

edit - also, he had a super busy weekend. We went to a dog show for the majority of the day on Saturday and he was totally exhausted when we got home. Sunday he was his normal self so I took him for a 2.5 hour, 4 mile walk and he had all kinds of fun.

The title shocked me. When dog don't eat and drink possible showing sign of closer to the other end.
Your Huksy just a picky eater.
You could try with olive oil as dressing on top of the food.
However, if your husky don't eat for 3-4 days, do takes it to the vet as they normally don't starve that long.

I agree, I'm fairly certain he's just being picky, I'm just not sure how long to wait before I investigate other causes. I'll wait a couple more days and see what happens. I was able to trick him into eating some yesterday by acting like I had a bowl of treats and asking him to do tricks. I hate to start adding things to his food to get him to eat. I feel like if I do that I'm just teaching him that not eating gets him something better.

Do you think that Dizzy might just not like the tripe or something mixed into the new stuff that you got for him?

Since Friday! I can't believe how stubborn he is being. I would maybe see how it goes tonight, and then if you have any of his previous raw left over, maybe try that and see how fast he eats it. That way you can figure out if its medical, or him just really not liking the new raw. If he eats the old raw quickly, then I might just feed him the other stuff and then wait him out again.

I'm not giving him the tripe any more, used up that chub, and he ate all of it and loved it. Now he's on lamb. He was fine with it the first few meals then just decided not to eat. I just feel like its a battle of the wills at this point and I don't want him to win because he will just keep doing it and he never had an issue with lamb before. But of course anxious me keeps thinking there is something medically wrong and I get all worked up and worried about it.

lillith87 wrote:

Here is what you do
Offer food at the normal morning feed time. Wait 30 minutes. If the food has not been eaten, take it and put it away.

Wait 3-4 hours. Offer the food again. Wait 20 minutes. If the food has not been eaten, take it and put it away.

Wait 5-6 hours (dogs have a strange sense of time they will know you waited longer this time) Wait 10 minutes. If the food has not been eaten, take it and put it away.

It should be around 5-6 O'Clock at this point. Offer food one last time before you go to bed. If your dog doesn't try to eat within the first couple of minutes take it and put it away.

Do this exact routine the next day. I PROMISE your dog will not starve himself. I made a stupid mistake of putting some meds the vet wanted Okami to take into her food to see if she would eat it, and she didn't eat for 2 days. I did this routine and she ate eventually. Don't change your brand of food or treat because of this refusal to eat. This will just teach him that if he holds out he will get different tasting/ lavish food or rewarded for not eating.... bad habits if you ask me. If you toughen up, so will he.

I am so happy I found this topic can not even say how much.Now I feel much better about Stars feeding habits. We were allready stressing out and thinking to change food and all sort od stuff..yes did mistakes like adding treats and other in food cause she didint wanna eat it.   Now I will just stick to ur advice and we will see who will win at the end.  This is really great and I feel like I've finally seen the light here . I never knew huskies r picky eaters ..thought its just Star having problems. Even asked the vet if she is underweight,and having 19,50 kilos response was she is just fine for her age. Hope Dizzy and Star start to eat soon and to become a bit less picky with their food

Oh, then I would wait him out! I didn't know he had eaten the other meals without so much as a fuss. You must be almost winning if he was looking for everything around the apartment this morning. I bet he will eat tonight. Where he is drinking normally, it should be okay to wait a little longer.

wpskier222 wrote:

I'm not giving him the tripe any more, used up that chub, and he ate all of it and loved it. Now he's on lamb. He was fine with it the first few meals then just decided not to eat. I just feel like its a battle of the wills at this point and I don't want him to win because he will just keep doing it and he never had an issue with lamb before. But of course anxious me keeps thinking there is something medically wrong and I get all worked up and worried about it.

We go though this regularly with our cats. The one will eat pretty much anything all the time. The other will occasionally refuse to eat something that she has eaten plenty times before. We normally try to wait it out for a day. If she doesn't eat the next day we give her something else for a couple of days and try to get her to go back the other food which she normally does. The last time was with whole rabbit chunks. Refused to eat pieces of it on the bone. Gave her some ground up rabbit a couple days later and she ate it without issue.

Turbo is Still being stuborn with eating, we have swiched to almost every type of food in the store. at least close to half of them. and he STILL does not like any of them, they recomended using fish oil, and that helps but he only eats the food with the fish oil on it. i just hope to find that one brand one day, and he will eat normally.

we r again today on a food strike. its almost 5 pm and so far she hasnt eaten her food. cookies she d have without a prob.. ..now we r off for a nice long walk and after that I hope she will eat at least this one meal today...

Diz did eat last night, but only if I hand fed him. I'm wondering if he just doesn't like the ground raw. I made little raw meat balls and hand fed and he ate those without a problem. Weirdo. Also, he got no treats, cookies, snacks, or people food until after he ate. I want him to learn he gets treats after dinner.

Jen, I used to give a jackpot treat after the dogs ate all of their dinner when they went through times of not wanting to finish. I eliminated it when they consistently ate all, but I bring it back on an as needed basis.

Like right now, my sibe is staying with my mom until our new house is finished since we're in a rental that won't allow him. He needs to take his vitamins for his arthritis which I have her mix in his dinner. Lately he's not been eating it all and therefore not getting all his vitamins. So I have her using the after dinner treat again to encourage him to finish. It almost always works with my boy.

I think I read a post by you about that on another thread so I decided to try it last night. I picked up this elk jerky at a show this weekend that he absolutely loves, so I'm going to save that as his special after dinner treat.