Teaching Your Dog to say "Yes” to Food

by Bailey Coldwell

We often come across puppies or dogs who are not eating well. I’ve addressed this before, but want to dive deeper. Keep reading if you have a dog who often declines food when offered.  We will talk about why this is happening and how to create a food plan to encourage your dog to “say yes!” 

Dogs are instinctively wired to be “opportunistic foragers”. This means that when food is present, they should naturally want to eat. That said, when we have a dog who does not want food that is offered, there is usually something else going on that we want to address. Simply put, a dog should be food motivated. 

The first and foremost piece of advice is to always check medical. If a dog is nauseous, having diarrhea, acid reflux, or otherwise just doesn’t feel right when eating their food, they are less likely to eat. We as people can relate to this. If I go out to eat and then later on feel sick, I will likely have an aversion to that item in the restaurant, opting to get a different dish next time. If you feel that your dog genuinely doesn’t feel well when eating their food, contacting the veterinarian is the first step. 

Let’s also evaluate the quantity of food being offered. Dog food bags give the estimate of calories/cups of food based on working dogs or sporting dogs, who need more calories. Therefore, the average pet dog needs less than the recommended food that we are offering them. Again, in comparison to people, you are going to be more excited for a meal if your body has gotten a chance to get hungry. If someone cooks a meal for you, but you just ate a large amount of calories twenty minutes ago, you aren’t going to have as much of a desire to eat that meal. If you are struggling to determine how much food your dog needs, you can also chat with your veterinarian about it. I encourage you to check out diagrams for “Body Condition Scoring” for dogs. This helps to determine if your dog is underweight, overweight, or just right. Knowing your dog’s “just right” weight will allow you to then add more or take away food if the dog fluctuates below or over that weight. Even just a few pounds overweight can drastically decrease your dog’s desire for food. 

Dogs are smart. When a puppy starts to decline their kibble, our first few actions tend to involve either hand feeding, providing extra attention from us, and adding high-value food to the refused food in order to get the dog to eat. In these situations, the dog is learning that if they “say no,” they either get a lot of attention or something better. We offer food as a cue, the dog chooses to wait, and then we reward them for it.

Behaviorally speaking, dogs can also learn to have a food aversion due to a bad experience relating to food. I want to share my own experience with this. I have a rescue mini poodle, Roux. It is assumed that he spent a decent amount of time in a crate before coming home to me. To try to make the crate positive, I would feed him in there. Or attempt to feed him. Over time, he rarely wanted to eat and would decline his food in the crate. What I was doing was actually creating an association of food equaling the scary thing that is going to happen. Of course, lowering his appetite. Plus, the crate was not becoming any more positive. Another example of this would be taking food and luring the dog towards something or someone they were scared of. Now, the dog sees the food that was lured to them and thinks the scary item or person will appear. After doing more research, I changed my approach. This is what I’m going to do with those of you who struggle with the dog wanting to eat when offered. 

A true feeding training plan will likely look differently depending on the dog. That said, feel free to reach out to me to really personalize this. Here is my new recommendation when dogs are not wanting to “say yes” to food. 

• Decide (by yourself or with your veterinarian) the end-goal base diet that you want your dog to eat. No jumping around to a bunch of different brands and types of food unless you are doing food trials directly with your veterinarian. 

• Choose one high-value healthy item to mix into the food temporarily. Shredded chicken, ground hamburger, canned dog food, etc. We are going to be using a decent amount of this at first. You want it to be relatively healthy, but really appealing.  

• Create a new setup and routine. Change everything you think could be a negative association to eating. A new style bowl. This can be a plate on the floor; it doesn’t need to be anything fancy, just different. Feed the dog in a different room. Avoid a crate or pen for feeding, if the puppy has said “no” to this before. Think of a small-ish room that you can be in as well, without invading space. Create a new feeding cue that the dog has never heard before, such as “eat”, “yummy”, or “meal”. If you currently have a strict feeding time, change the time. 

• Inside the bowl, offer fewer calories than normal because we want to help increase the chances of the dog eating what is offered. Half of these calories should be the base diet, and half should be the one “good stuff” item. Mix it together to avoid puppy picking around the kibble. Also, add in enough water to moisten it. 

• Put the food bowl down, say the new cue, and just hang out in that room for 10 minutes with the dog. Don’t coax and don’t add anything else after you put the bowl down. You can tidy up the room, read a book, scroll on your phone, etc. 

• After the ten minutes is up (or the dog has finished eating) encourage the dog to move away from the location. You can put the dog outside or just in a different area of the home. Then pick up the bowl. We do it this way to prevent resource guarding. The rest of the food, if some is left, can be used for the next meal and for training during the day. 

• Speaking of training, try your best not to give other treats during the day while we are working on this. Use other forms of rewards such as praise, play, or attention. 

• If the dog ate all of the food, yay! Keep the exact approach for the next 3 days or so. Then, start to add less of the good stuff and more kibble. So 60% kibble, and 40% of the high-value reward. Keep doing this as the dog has success. Due to us originally lowering overall calories, you can slowly add more of the kibble to get to the ideal calories if needed. 

• If the dog did not eat all of the food, give the same percentages and amount for the next two meals. If the puppy still is not eating it all, drop the kibble percentage and increase the high-value percentage. 60% good stuff and 40% kibble. Try to avoid changing the high-value item until the puppy is consistently declining it for 3 meals or so (or chat with me). 

There you have it. Please think medical if the puppy is declining even the best of the best food. I can now say that, by taking this approach, my mini poodle, Roux, is now consistently eating just his kibble with water. He is even excited for mealtime. Reach out to me for more help if you would like.