[The Popster]

Hi there,
We have a nearly 6 month old female Minature Poodle. ( Or possibly a Kangapoo ).
Poppy - aka The Popster, Popsicle, Madam.
Of course, no need to say here she is incredible.
We used to have a dog some 25 years ago.
Kipper was his name, a mixture - guessing Rotty/Lab. Cost £14 including lead and collar from Battersea dogs home.
He was a very special dog ( as they all are), really really smart.
We went through the pain of losing him, but did not 'replace' him as our lifestyle changed.
For the past couple of years we wanted to have another dog.
Truth is with this lockdown/working from home situation, and the knowledge that our lifestyle was going to change again with the intention of including a dog in our lives, we decided to 'go for it'.
I had it in my head for sometime that I really wanted an intelligent breed. Recalling my mother's opinion that Poodles were extermely smart I decided a Poodle was on the cards.
But for lockdown, with the planned move to the country put on hold, where the plan was for 2 dogs - mine a Standard Poodle, hers possibly a Ridgeback, in the meantime a Minature Poodle suited current situation.
Poppy arrived back in November.
Flippin' hell !! Inteligent ? Smart ? It's been a real eye opener!
But no need here, I'm sure to wax lyrical about these amazing dogs! Like you don't know!

Funny really, because I did my 'research' on Poodles before commiting, but clearly I blanked out some of the 'minus' points about Poodle care, and their characteristics.
I probably could bang out quite a few questions to you guys, but right now I have just one that I'd like some advice on.
Here it is - ( finaly).
FUSSY EATER ?
Poppy has been eating since we got her. She is coming up for 6 mnths old and weighs in at 5.49.
Our breeder had been feeding dry Eukanuba, she came with a supply.
Been through all the dry vs wet conumdrum, no cereal etc etc...
So for the past couple of months there has been a mixture diet.
Coming down mainly to Pedigree chum puppy/ Butchers puppy wet ( tins and sachets), and kibble as treats in snuffle mat and puzzle toys.
Her poos are 90% good, nicely formed and even roll if deposited on a slight camber.
She has had a couple of tummy upsets, one a bug going round the local dog population, and another we don't know what but only lasted 24hrs.
She does have boiled chicken, which we used to settle her down when she had the bug.
She still has the chicken which we use mostly for training.
But the last 2 days she is turning her nose up at her wet food offerings. Completely.
She could be fussy in that she simply wanted a different flavour we discovered.
But now she turns her nose up at whatever is there.
Should we simply insist and leave to the food down, and just let her get hungry so she eats then?
An older dog I would do that, but should we do that as she is a growing puppy?
She certainly would never turn her nose up at the boiled chicken.

One of the things that amuses me is looking back at my 'research' one point I 'missed' is that they can be Fussy eaters.
Hmmm... because I also missed that apparently these little darlings are also extreme scavangers? ( Hey though what dog isn't)?
Begs the question, turn your nose up at Pedigree Chum, but scoff that bit of 'god knows what ' ? laying in the gutter!!
Hey, but that's a bit like the old adage about dogs having 10,000 times better sense of smell than us.
Which begs the question, why stick their bloody nose right up the bottom of another dog if their sense of smell is so acute?

Anyway any advice please would be most welcome.

 

[twyla]

A healthy dog will not starve itself. I have no fussy poodles, they eat what they are given.
Unless your dog has a food intolerance which one of mine does but the food ingestion results in diarrhea, GI pain, gas and belching.
I do have a fussy 15 1/2 year old chi mix which she had gotten better about, I found out they changed the formulation of all their wet food, discerning dog parents are reading the ingredients these days and they loaded the wet food with green beans, I found that she enjoyed eating fresh pet as well as the GI diet one of my poodles is on.

 

[The Popster]

A healthy dog will not starve itself. I have no fussy poodles, they eat what they are given.
Unless your dog has a food intolerance which one of mine does but the food ingestion results in diarrhea, GI pain, gas and belching.
I do have a fussy 15 1/2 year old chi mix which she had gotten better about, I found out they changed the formulation of all their wet food, discerning dog parents are reading the ingredients these days and they loaded the wet food with green beans, I found that she enjoyed eating fresh pet as well as the GI diet one of my poodles is on.

Hi, and thanks.
Interesting as Poppy has always made little 'furbee' noises, tiny belches.
But her appetite has been good, and her stools good.
Just the past couple of days 'turning her nose up'
She has got a tooth waiting to come out, which may be irritating her.
Good point about the loaded beans!
We do have some of the GI dry feed from when she had a bug, might offer her that.
Hey, thanks for your reply.
All the best to you and yours.

 

[The Popster]

Thanks.
Just offered Poppy her Royal Cannin GI feed. ( Supplied when she had the bug).
She ate it happily!!
Very Interesting.
When she was 'ill' she ate it, but after 2 or 3 days turned her nose up.
Either way great to see her noshing.
For now.

 

[Dechi]

With poodles you need to be the one in charge and once you’ve found a food the dog likes, stick to it. Of course you need ro make sure there are no medical issues. But if not, then that’s how it is. If not you’ll end up cooking homemade fancy stuff and it still won’t be enough. They’re intelligent dogs so why would they settle for dog food if they can get filet mignon ?

 

[WinnieThePoodle]

Winnie is just over 7 months old (mini poo) and she goes through periods where she doesn't want to eat much. She has kibble dry during the day (or sometimes with a little drizzle of salmon oil) and kibble in the evening with a little bit of wet food (only a little bit of wet food, maybe a third of a tray or pouch). When she is hungry she eats it all. Sometimes she doesn't eat very much at all. She is healthy in every way so I just leave the food down for 20 or 30 minutes and then it gets picked up. She won't starve. She knows how much she wants to eat. We weighed her when she was 6 months old and she was 7.5kg (she is full mini poo height).

 

[CieCie]

Welcome to this great community! Our old spoo didn't become hard to feed until her last year and our new pup will eat anything she can get ahold of and I'm sure our home would be in a real panic if she ever walked away from her food bowl. I agree about them being so smart she might choose to hold out for that delicious chicken over anything else but for now we'll consider it a win that she ate her GI feed. Yay! Let us know how the next few days go. 😊🐾❤

 

[PeggyTheParti]

Had a good laugh at your entertaining introduction. Thanks for that and welcome! Flippin’ hell, indeed. Lol.

Despite my previous experience with poodles, Peggy was quite the eye-opener for me. She is sensitive and brilliant and excellent at self-regulating her diet. I fell into calling her picky at the start, but quickly realized she knows what she needs and I can trust her. Food can go off. It can have ingredients that cause an uncomfortable tummy. All sorts of things can make a poodle abruptly turn up her nose. So we did lots of trial and error, and made frequent use of our local pet food store, which offers free samples.

We now feed a wet food that is essentially just shredded chicken. She gets a small dollop for each meal, and then in a separate bowl (important so it doesn’t get contaminated by the wet food) she gets Farmina kibble, which we top up throughout the day as necessary.

Some days she’s ravenous. Some days she barely grazes. These fluctuations, which we’ve diligently tracked over the past 1.5 years, have been linked with growth spurts, hormonal changes, teething, illness, and sometimes nothing we could decipher.

One constant is that she loves to work for food, so we have a second brand of kibble (Honest Kitchen), which we hand feed throughout the day in short training sessions. She also gets it as a bedtime snack and during grooming. If I were to fill a bowl with it, she’d eat it sporadically like the Farmina. But in these contexts, she consistently gobbles it down.

 

[PeggyTheParti]

(Should add that we would never leave the wet food out for more than 20-30 minutes. In the rare case she doesn’t eat it in that time, it goes in the fridge and is offered one more time, then it goes in the garbage.)

 

[Rose n Poos]

Hi and Welcome!

Good points all around made above. Poodles generally self-regulate. Poodles will decide the menu, if allowed - with a caveat.

In my now 7 miniature poodle lifetime, I've had one that I had defined as picky - until I discovered that I had simply never found a kibble that he actually liked. I felt terrible realizing that he'd just been tolerating food for the previous 2 years.

For the last year and some, every day, 2 times a day, he happily eats his base kibble to the shiny bottom of the bowl. By happy, I mean he does a happy dance while I'm fixing it.

What does change daily is the topper. This is usually a small amount of bits of unseasoned pan fried chicken with a small amount of plain rice for the early meal, and bits of whatever we had for dinner, minus dog unfriendly ingredients, for the dinner topper.