Hiding food

NavyDog

Yucca (10 wk old kai) is weird about food. She will rarely just eat it out of a bowl, she always trys to flip the food out of the bowl & hide it under her blanket before eating it. Either that or she just plays with it. Im sure this is a primitive trait & Ive known of dogs doing it before but none of my dogs have done it. She is a heathy weight so I know she's ok but im trying to encourage her to eat more which is hard because she's not food driven. Any suggestions? My brothers Yokie mix does this & he can only get him to eat by putting a hand towel over his bowl but I dont want Yucca eating to be dependent on whether or not she can hide her food so I'd like to keep this from becoming a habit while she is young.

note: She is fed 3 times a day inside her crate. We started with a metal bowl then switched to a ceramic one thinking she didnt like how shiny it was (turns out that doesnt bother her as she sometimes tries to steal food from my other dogs metal bowl)

WrylyBrindle

My female kai caches objects, and will flip her nose at her food bowl like she is 'burying' the food if she doesnt feel like eating it right now. When I see her flipping at the food, I just say Ok, I hear ya, and take it away and feed her later. She also 'buries' toys in the couch cushions, under blankets and in the yard- not so much anymore (she's 2) but much more as a pup. My male kai never buries things or caches items. If she is a good weight, then she may just not want to leave the 'extra' (to her!) food just lying around and feels she has to store it. Pups will eat more and less as they grow- if you are feeding her a super good food she may be getting all she needs out of what may seem to you to be not as much food. I say if she;s healthy, listen to her and let her guide you

oddball

Yucca's brother Logan is wierd with food too. He doesn't try to bury it but he doesn't like to eat more than a few bites at any one time. He likes to pick up two or three pieces and carry them across the room and eat those slowly and repeates this a few times. I feed him 3 times a day also and dinner is the only time he usually cleans his bowl. Sometime If i don't think he has eaten enough I do training with him and use his food as rewards. He has no problem eating it then. Most the time though i just let him eat and save what he doesn't finish for later.

NavyDog

Yucca does that too. She will take only a couple kibble at a time. I kennel her when i feed her most of the time so she will eat a couple, nap, eat a few more, nap again, ect. I do it mostly cause when I did feed her outside the kennel, she would take those pieces and hide them around the room. She isnt food motivated at all so i dont use the kibble for training but ive found that she likes me making a game out of it. If i bounce toss a few kibbles in/under a blanket or scatter them around the room, she loves running around to find & eat them all. I also put a handful in her kong toy so when she rolls it, food pops out

tmd

I don't know about kai, but my JA/AA blend does a better job of regulating his food consumption, or at least that's the way I look at it. He will eat only as much as he wants and then walk away; we just pick it up and use it for his next meal.

Whereas, my other mix (border collie x lab) will eat until she throws up. She has counter-surfed a whole tray of croissants fresh out of the oven before and 30 minutes later they came back up, essentially whole. Yuck!

I'm not sure, but do you think the hiding the food game you're playing with her might reinforce the hiding food behavior? Probably not for the kong, but under blankets, etc. seems plausible.

NavyDog

We just started doing the blanket thing today cause we were worried she wasnt eating enough. normally i just toss pieces of kibble & she will chase them down. I dont want to reinforce the behavior but at the same time I want her to eat.

tmd

Do you think Yucca is underweight? Obesity is as common a problem with puppies as with humans, so make sure it's not just your perception, but an actual issue; I think that our collective perception of a healthy looking dog is somewhat skewed towards overweight.

http://paws4udogs.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/killing-them-with-kindness/

It's my understanding that even though NK might at times be "picky" eaters or not always finish their meal, they won't starve themselves. Other NK owners/breeders should chime in if that's not the case.

NavyDog

Shes definitly not underweight in fact she seems a very healthy weight. Ive raised many litters of puppies. Im just being a bit over cautious. i want to make sure shes getting all the nutrition she needs.

cdenney

My kai, (almost 2) will cache food that she doesnt want right now or doesn't want to eat in public (raw chicken infront of the shiba). As long as shes at a healthy weight id listen to her.

NavyDog

Yeah, thats how Im trying to see it. Im used to all my dogs eating all their food in one sitting. My 5 year old Amstaff, Cayenne is my touchiest eater. She wont eat right away but eventually when she does choose to eat, she eats it all. Like you and @WrylyBrindle said, as long as her wieghts good then Ill just let her be.

Myabee09

Shelby hides food too! I just saw it for the first time a few weeks ago. She eventually eats it, but it's like she didn't want me to know she didn't eat it all right away.

shibamistress

Most dogs won't starve themselves, and most dogs who are picky eaters will learn to eat eventually.

But not all. I had an Akita who simply wouldn't eat a lot of the time, and she got dangerously thin because she refused to eat. We had to continually find different tempting foods for her.

And my Shiba lost 15% of her body weight in six weeks. While she had a number of health problems she didn't lose weight at this point through vomiting--she simply was not eating enough to keep herself alive. It was so bad that my vet and I had to have the talk, which was basically that starvation is a horrible way to die, so if she continued to refuse food, I was going to have to euthanize her, which was, in fact, what we had to do, though that decision was made after she was bit by a snake.

So since I've lived with dogs that really would have starved themselves, I'm reluctant to say "dogs won't let themselves starve." Because some will.

I don't think this is the problem in this case though!

tmd

Ah yes, @shibamistress I should've been more clear. A dog without underlying health issues won't (in most cases) starve themselves. I should definitely avoid the extreme description and it sounds like @NavyDog got the advice he was looking for: if the dog is a healthy weight, let it food self-regulate. That's my (horrible) attempt to boil all this down to a catchy rhyme...never a good idea in my case L-)

NavyDog

Thanks all. So glad to hear other nihon ken do this as well. She does eat in her own time & I did an experiment today. Since she usually try's to steal cayennes food, I put yucca's food in an identical bowl right next to cayenne's so yucca thought she was eating cayennes and scarffed it all down.

tmd

Lol, @NavyDog that's hilarious, so she's just a klepto!!!! )

NavyDog

Yup & she gets so excited about "getting away with it" that she bounces around wagging her tail between bites