Are your dogs a picky eater? One of the usual problems that most dog owners encountered is their dogs’ lack of appetite, which is sometimes common among them. When this happens, it is very crucial to identify the cause of such behavior. It’s tolerable and acceptable knowing that your dogs are just not hungry. But when they show appetite loss for quite a while, well that’s now alarming. There might be some more serious cause behind it.
Possible Causes of Picky Eating
What would be the possible cause why your Huskies don’t eat that much? Here are some of those causes.
- Huskies’ Activity Level
One of the reasons why your dog may not be in the mood to eat is due to their level of activity each day. If your dogs energetically play or do some exercise (walking, running and others) every day, there will be huge need for calories. But when Huskies doesn’t have few physical activities made, his body, which is still full of stored energy will only require consuming only few calories.
In other words, the activity level that your dogs perform each day will be the bases on whether they will eagerly eat or not. When your dogs are picky, check and monitor their level of activity. If you observed that they’ve done lots of activities yet they still eat less, then that’s something to ponder. Specific actions should be made.
- Parasites Or Illness
When your dogs don’t eat for the whole day, in the next day and days to come, bring them to a Veterinarian to undergo complete checkup. This is essential means on determining what’s really going on to your dogs’ system. If you want to worry less and secure the safety of your dogs, then, you may visit vets.
- Poor Quality Foods
There are dogs that become choosy on their foods not because of an illness but because they don’t just want the food. It is important to check the label of your dogs’ food. Always spot the dog food ingredients that will not be favorable for your Huskies. These foods include grains and other cheaply processed meat.
When your dogs smell and just lick the food, it’s an indication that you’ve bought a low quality or not appropriate one. But due to varied manufacturers of cheap and low quality dog foods, there’s high possibility for you to be lured and buy it. So, always be critical when reading food labels as well as picking brands.
Causes of Constant Eating Among Huskies
If picky eating can be alarming for your dogs, and then is constant eating due to hungriness can also be troublesome? Over eating and picky eating can be caused by intake of not nutritious foods.
Siberian Huskies and other snow dogs are really not popular for over eating. But eating abnormality can be possibly experience by them. The reason could lie on not getting enough nutrition. When dogs eat less nutritious foods, their body urge them to get some more. But if you’ve observed that your Huskies are over fed and are heavy in weight, take time to check the label of your dogs’ food. If you’d seen soy, corn, wheat or processed meat on food label, immediately change their food because it’s not good for your dog.
When checking food label, take note of the following ingredient or inclusion:
- Low Quality Protein
Protein that comes from processed meat and other poor quality sources will not be a wise choice. You fully know that your dogs demands great nutrition supply so low protein from animal byproduct is not advisable because it doesn’t sustain your Huskies needs. Look for protein sources that are of high quality. When you found out that your present dog foods is composed of low protein source, change or switches it to more beneficial dog foods.
Protein base should be change according to seasonal modification. When your dogs love eating particular dog food in a certain time frame yet in the next season, they lost appetite on it, it’s an indication that there should be switch of food.
- Noting Cereal Grains
Check if cereals or any types of grains are listed in the food label of the dog food. When it appears on the list, then that dog food product is just filled with grain fillers. That’s not a good thing for your dogs. To comply with the growing protein demand of your Huskies, giving them the right protein source is vital.
Picky Eating – What Else To Try
What are others things or ways you could try to address and solve the picky eating habit of your Huskies? Dogs sometimes react on foods like humans did. Some dogs are very sensitive and particular regarding the texture, the size and the taste of their foods. There are dogs that love to eat crunchy as well as dry foods. But some other dogs may prefer to eat food with liquid.
When Softened Foods Are Preferred By Huskies …
When Huskies want their meal or food to be soft, your option is to add chicken soup or just add water to their kibble in order to attain some desirable moisture. The addition of soup to their every meal also helps in enriching their nutrition. For underweight and picky eating Huskies, it contributes additional nutrition.
When Huskies Want Dry Meals…
If your dogs want their meal to be dry yet enticing, you can mix a dog food that is high quality with a dry food. This is one way on changing dog food flavors while adding some nutritional benefits.
Picky eating and over eating, like any behavior of your dogs, have always an underlying cause. That is why when you observed these on your dogs, always pay attention and create changes in their eating habit. If you’ll just neglect this type of eating abnormalities, your dogs may suffer from a disease that may threaten their lives. Do the best thing for your dogs.
Understanding the eating habit or behavior of your dogs can be hard sometimes. Some of you experience several situations where you already don’t know what to do because your dogs are not eating the food that you gave to them. It’s the time when you know that your dogs are hungry yet when the food is given, they will just smell and turns away.
Has Appetite Yet Still Don’t Eat- Dog Problems
Have you experience those times when you are really hungry yet you felt disappointed and just chose not to eat because you don’t like the meal? This is often the eating behavior of most kids and some adults. The same behavior can also be observed among your dogs.
With picky eating dogs, almost all dog owners try their very best to solve this type of problem. Some of them came up with varied witty tricks just to encourage their dogs to eat.
They tried different persuading methods such as changing dog foods for several times yet nothing have changed. Others of you have tried to give dry food, wet food and everything just to please the dogs. But still nothing happened. There’s no progress at all.
For dog lovers, this will surely be stressful and worrisome. In the end, you still think and ask questions like “what’s wrong? What else would be needed to do for the dogs to eat?”
When your dogs suffer, you suffer more. Then, the vets enter into the situation, checking and diagnosing them. The vets then arrived into clear results, that there’s nothing wrong with your dog. They often advise to give supplement and improve dogs’ nutrition. Silly isn’t it? But this is somewhat very common situation you must deal with.
Suited Diet for Specific Breed
Picky eating , over eating and other kinds of diseases are rooted from not good diet and related practices. Imbalance and insufficient supply of minerals, supplements and nutrition plays great role regarding the formation of some dog illness. One common issue is about zinc problems, its mal-absorption and deficiency. But when it comes to picky eating, there may be other underlying causes
The Zinc Deficiency
Knowing several disadvantages or effects of being zinc deficient, several of you may have thought that one cause of picky eating can be zinc deficiency. One symptom that zinc deficient dogs may experience is having altered tastes. This is the same when humans like you experiences cold, in which your taste buds are really not well functional. This is often the cause why you often don’t feel like eating.
When you have cold, the taste of food is far from its original tastes. This type of situation is oftentimes experience by your dogs. So imagine how they awfully deal with it. This case is particularly and highly possible for your dogs that are displaying picky eating behaviors. So it is important for you to know the root cause to avoid further problems.
Dog Foods’ Multiple Flavors
All types of dog food have particular flavors like what human food contains. When such food flavors reach a particular potion in the tongue, certain signal will be sent to your taste buds. Afterwards, the signal will then be forwarded to your brain and you have what you call taste. This happened when your brain responds the sent signals.
For human beings, foods are being produced in order to match with your taste palate. For dogs, foods are being created in order to entice and please their palate.
Dog Flavors and Picky Eating
Since there are several enticing and pleasurable food made for your dogs, they will surely be overwhelmed by their options. But picky eating couldn’t still be avoided. Having combination of food ingredients will result to having very delightful meal. Yet there are instances where some dogs are not able to effectively recognize food flavors. In some cases, foods may taste bad, wrong or even taste nothing on them.
Their brain may not be able to get the signal that’s why there’s no taste feedback. This could explain why your dogs chose not to eat even if there are hungry. Also, the way they smell and tastes often go hand and hand. With this, your dogs may not be able to determine the actual food they are eating.
Food Problems to Taste Issues
The type of foods eaten by your dogs can be one great reason why your dogs don’t like eating. The food could be poor quality, not delightful and not enticing. But on the other hand, there are still other causes such as inability to taste and smell well. Sometimes dog food is not the issues, it’s some condition caused by having insufficient zinc.
How Can You Help Your Huskies
When the appetite problem of your dogs is caused by zinc related issues, you must start to comply with their zinc requirement. In their daily meal, plan and do your best to reach their body’s zinc requirement.
But you must take note that the system of your dogs functions or behaves differently. You could expect the same when dealing with zinc. Consider the differences in lifestyle, habit or everyday practice, zinc can behave differently in your dogs’ body. So being familiar with varied types of zinc and its uses will help you a lot.
Zinc Types — Knowing What to Try
There are several stores providing zinc tablets or vitamins. All forms of zinc are still zinc in general. But of course, there will be types that will be best for your dogs and there is also zinc that can contribute less zinc supply.
You can choose among gluconate, picolinate and chelated zinc. There is also methionine, which is one of much known type of zinc that is available over the counter. But methionine, unlike the formerly mentioned types of zinc, this could not be very responsive to your dogs’ needs.
Some of the type of zinc can’t be easily absorbed by your dogs due to the effect of some minerals integrated with zinc. In some condition, for Huskies with high requirement of zinc, those supplement or vitamins might not still suffice.
To arrive on the suited or right zinc for your Huskies, the only way is to try new formulation to achieve best health outcome for them. Just remember to avoid some zinc types including zinc oxide and zinc sulphate because these are low quality zinc types. Most manufacturers sadly include zinc oxide as ingredient in their manufactured foods.
Amount of Zinc to Give
When you finally get the right source and type of zinc, it’s not yet the end. There still other considerations and other things to know such as the amount or dose of zinc that your dog must take in a day. Always remember that the ability of your dogs’ system to absorb zinc will be dependent to your dogs.
Some Best Approaches
- The first thing that you must do is to choose the formulation of zinc that will be best for your Huskies. You can start by adding about 25 mg of zinc in its diet.
- It’s favorable to give your Huskies zinc supplements or minerals three (3) to four (4) hours after they eat. This is essential to avoid mineral interaction, which is often the cause of mal-absorption.
- Continue giving the said those for about two (2) weeks.
- If there’s no visible improvement regarding the appetite of your dogs, you may increase the zinc amount that you usually give to them. You can increase it up to 50mg with the same type of zinc.
- Since the dose is larger, there’s a possibility that stomach upsetting may experience by your dogs. So each day, you can divide the zinc supplement to avoid this. Afterwards, observe is there’s already vital changes.
Zinc – Considering the Ages of Your Dogs
When you dogs’ age is 35 up to 50 pounds, don’t increase the everyday amount of zinc for above 100mg. Well, above 100 mg zinc is considered toxic to your dog. But this still depend on their level of needed zinc each day. You just can choose to have another formulation of zinc and be back to square one. Start all over through testing and giving them 25 mg zinc.
If there’s still no improvement, increase the dosage to 100mg just like what you’ve done in your first attempt. It’s a trial and error. Sometimes you need to try them all in order to know what will be the best match for your Huskies.
The Larger the Huskies, the More Zinc Supply
The amount or dosage of zinc that will be given each day is dependent on the level of zinc requirement that your Huskies demand. If they are larger in size, you can expect that they also need large amount of zinc compared to smaller dogs.
If your dogs’ weighs about 75 lbs or more, the dosage of zinc each day can be raised to 150 mg zinc. There’s always consideration on giving the right amount of zinc every day. But always remember, that giving your dogs more zinc, though it’s not really required, can harm your dogs because it’s not a better choice.
What Doses Can Be Toxic Each Day?
- For smaller dogs, giving 250 mg zinc will lead them to vomiting
- It can be a suicide giving your dogs 900 mg zinc in a day.
Always remember that giving zinc supplements don’t really guarantee you that it will work for your dogs. But there’s no harm in trying. Picky eating pattern is one cause or symptoms of having zinc deficiency disorder. So giving it a try will is important. Your dogs are worth everything so trying every way to improve their nutrition is a must.
Panic and Worries
Most of you treat your Huskies like their brothers and sisters, the baby of the house. That is why when they got sick it creates stress, panic and worriness. Since they couldn’t talk like what your actual children do, it’s difficult to know the cause. You could only observe their less energetic behavior and picky eating habit. The longer the time that Huskies ignored their food, the longer also the time you battle with worry.
The eating behavior or anything unusual changes should be properly addressed. Never ignore your dogs most especially if you observed that they are not in their usual self. Treat them well in order to avoid repentance when something bad happened to them.
Your dogs are precious. So if you encounter health related problems, try to have bright approach in solving it. Don’t let your fear and worries enable you to think less. Face the problem energetically. In this, you will have a clearer better mind to join your dogs in solving their health problems. Aside from that, blaming yourself will never help you.
