Thursday, October 1, 2009

Buy In Bulk

Titan is the pickiest, least stomach-motivated dog I have ever known.  Since he was a puppy we have been experimenting with different foods, but he has never eaten anything consistently or with gusto.  We have always let him free feed on Canidae kibble, but he tends to go days without touching it followed by gorging himself on a full bowl – feast or famine!  For a while he was happy to get the raw mixture that Tilley, Willow and Watson eat, but it costs $1.50/pound and Titan needs four pounds per day (the other dogs eat three pounds per day between them) -- for the same annual price we could keep two horses fed.  We tried switching to chicken carcasses (something the other dogs also eat and love) for the more reasonable cost of $0.50/pound, but half the time he would simply let them rot.  Not only is that wasteful and disgusting, but also very frustrating…what kind of dog won’t eat raw meat?!?  In desperation I bought a case of Lean Cuts canned food from Costco a few weeks back and, of course, he loved it.  For Titan “loved it” means “ate it within an hour of being served” and not “hoovered it down” , but it was still a good sign.  He has been eating a can twice daily ever since (still with the free-choice kibble) and we think that we’ve finally found a long-term solution to keeping the 120-pound dog eating regular meals.  The only hitch? We are leaving for six months in six weeks time.  So today David and I stormed the Costco and bought 20 cases of Lean Cuts…enough to last 220 days.  Let’s hope he continues to like  the stuff…

dog.food.by.the.truck

3 comments:

Funder said...

A picky dog must be so frustrating! I'm lucky enough to have only had "easy keeper" dogs. Glad you found something he likes!

AareneX said...

I had a picky-eater dog...for 18 years! (shelties can live a lonnng time!) In his elder years, I began to suspect ulcers--perhaps you could have your dog 'scoped if you think he'd not eating because it causes him pain?

Here's what Pippin would eat when he wouldn't eat much else: rice. Any kind: brown, basmati, cheap white, it didn't matter.

Sometimes I could dump in chicken broth and meat and he'd eat it, but sometimes all he would eat was rice. Weird little dog...but he did live a long time!

Towards the end of his life he became blind, deaf, and the vet said that he'd probably lost most of his sense of smell too, so then he was a REALLY picky eater because he couldn't find the food ;-( We resorted to feeding him the cheapest, stinkiest canned dogfood at the market--cuz at age 16 I didn't think I'd be shortening his life much by feeding him junk. He lived 2 more years, and for at least 6 month after we had him put down, I couldn't even look at the photo on the cheap dogfood cans without crying. He was a good dog. Weird, though!

dt said...

hey - where's the shot from costco?