Help, We adopted a 3yo last week and it is becoming apparent that the previous owner fed her from the table. We cannot get her to eat her kibble, we are trying the high protein Nuturo and when we first bought it she took a couple of bites and that was it, we have tried mixing a can of wet in and a scrambled egg and nothing seems to work, she will go over and sniff it and then she walks away and lays down. But, as soon as we take a pan out to start cooking our dinner she is right there in the kitchen under foot intently staring at what we are making. We are starting to run out of ideas to get her to eat and we are getting a little worried that she is not eating. Help?

Okay, second time's gonna work right? I already wrote this out and lost it, so here goes again ...

With any rehomed dog there's almost always a certain amount of retraining involved and you're seeing some of what you need to do.

One of my classic lines for this type of situation is "No healthy dog is goiing to starve itself to death laying beside a bowl of reasonably decent quality dog food."

You just adopted her so I presume there was a vet involved in checking her for health - so check that box.

I'll also presume that you're feeding her a reasonably good quality dog food - so check that box, too.

What I'd suggest is feeding her the way that most of us feed our. Put down her morning bowl of food and give her 10-15 minutes to eat. If she doesn't eat then pick it up and offer it to her again in the evening, give her 10-15 minutes to eat and then pick it up again till the next morning.

That's going to be rough on her, but she has to learn that her food is her food and your food is your food. It's also going to be rough on you watching her watch you - but you're just going to have to adopt a "tough love" strategy - no treats, nothing except dog food at least until she accepts that it's her dog food or nothing. She really won't starve herself ....

Caveat: If she refuses to eat anything to the point that she's seriously losing weight then it's time to go back to the vet.

Huh?!!? I posted almost the same thing as Al when this first came out, its not here

Anyway - what Al said!

I want to add a couple of things, the first is to pick on Amy with "Yeh, that's an easy way to not post something! (Notice, I said this was the SECOND time I posted it, something must have been hungry on the server this morning.)

The other, more seriously, my dogs will all come into the kitchen when I'm cooking - and yeh, they're underfoot - but, over time, I've taught them that just because I dropped something doesn't mean that it's theirs. All three will look at me as much as if to say "Well, may I??" I may tell them to "Get it" and I'm just as apt to tell them to "Leave it, it's mine" (I'm a bachelor, 5 second rule applies!) THAT did not come easily as all of mine are also rescues and we had a *lot* of retraining to do.