My puppy is having problem eating

[jumblejack]

Hi all. I am Raja frm Singapore and am new here in this forum. glad to meet u all cool guyz and i really think this forum rocks to the core...ok let me give u general details of my dog.

I have a Pembroke Welsh Corgi of about 8mths. She weighs abt 7.5kg and thts abt 13-15 lbs. I have been feeding her ANF Puppy Formula dry food once in the morning and science diet chicken recipe wet food in the evening. So tht's abt 2 meals a day ( 1 dry meal and 1 wet meal ). The problem is that whenever we put dry food in the bowl and call her to eat, she would attend to the bowl, smell the food, eat like one ball and tht's it. She will just come to us and sit beside us. For the wet food, we make sure she sits beside the food bowl and we put wet food teaspoon by teaspoon till she has enough.

Can anyone suggest what should i do to increase her appetite? is 7.5kg for a 8mth puppy too light? Thanx guyz!

[Barrett]

Does she eat the canned food ok? She may like the taste of the canned food better and is being picky of the dry food. A normal female corgi should weigh between 20 and 25 pounds (depending on the size/hieght of the dog). At 8 months your puppy still has at least 4 or more months to grow. You might be right on track with her weight. Some dogs will fill out and lose that puppy body up to 2 years of age.
If she is playing fine and drinking fine and you have no other worries besieds how she eats her food, I wouldn't worry too much. If you suspect she is just being picky and likes canned food better than her dry food try mixing the two together to get her to eat more or try slowly switching to a better brand of kibble. She will eat if you let her sit long enough. A dog will not let herself starve and will eat when she is hungry enough.

[jumblejack]

ok thanx for the reply..she is drinking and playing fine....but now i presume tht she is picky abt dry food... well some websites suggest that u stick to one dry food and leave the dry food for 10 mins. if she doesnt eat, take off the bowl and give her food the next meal time. tht is what i am intending to do now. today morning, she didnt eat dry food and now ( abt 6pm) i tried giving her dry food again, she still didn t eat. i m not giving her wet food till she finishes her dry food. so her next meal is gonna be tomorrow...is this a gd idea?

[Kade]

My puppy was shy about eating, so I bought some baby food (just a meat, no veggies or anything fancy) and mixed a tiny bit of that in, just for taste. Now that he's eating more enthusiastically I've phased the baby food out.

(We're transitioning him from mashed-up kibble (microwaved with water) to hard kibble. The baby food is definitely easier to mix with the mashed-up stuff.)

[calgal]

You may consider finding a dry kibble that she likes. I don't know what you have to choose from over there. You could start asking people who also live there that have dogs, what they feed theirs. Be sure to read the labels to make sure it's "complete" and "balanced" and NO BY-PRODUCTS!! Remember, the first three ingredients are the ones the food is mostly made up of (hopefully it's chicken, lamb, turkey and such) so try and stay away from the ones that have "meal" written after it.