Please help - anorexia

[mckenzie]

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Hi & thanks for reading. I'm writing on behalf of my Mum who desperately needs advice. Her 11 year old Labrador, Dylan, has beed diagnosed with anorexia. About 6 weeks ago he stopped eating & so after a visit to the vet they discovered some kind of infection in his gums & he had to have 5 teeth taken out.

The gums have healed nicely so that part went well, the problem now is he is only interested in eating chicken & rice. He has had extensive stays at the vet & every test you could possibly imagine to eliminate any physical problems & he has a clean bill of health. The last ditch attempt by the vet was to prescribe diazepam, this worked temporarily & he ate normal dog food for a few days but then after he was back to refusing & only eating chicken & rice. He has been offered dozens of different types of dog food, from very expensive luxury type to normal kibble.

I pointed out that he needed to be trained back to a normal routine - i.e. put the food down at the same times each day & walk away then if the food has not been eaten after 10 minutes, pick it up & repeat until he starts eating it. No treats in between either. My Mum managed to do this for 4 & 1/2 days but he held out & didn't eat anything in this time & so back came the chicken & rice.

He was a typical labrador before this & would eat almost anything at the drop of a hat. His appetite now is apparently very good as he is always there with his ears up if there is any food around (she doesn't give him treats or feed from the dinning table or anything like that). However, at meal times he will refuse everything but chicken.

She feels like she has tried everything & is at a total loss as to what can be done now. The vet suggested a dog psychologist but the cost of all this has got well out of control already.

Any advice would be very gratefully received !

Thanks

 

[JoanneF]

How very unusual. I wonder if losing the 5 teeth has made it more difficult to physically get food into his mouth or chew? I don't have a silver bullet but you could try different bowl shapes, bowls with different material or a shallow tray. Or during his recuperation continue with chicken. Have you tried raw? You can get it ready prepared so it is nutritionally complete. One other thing, since this is unusual and not him just being fussy, I wouldn't be lifting the food after 10 minutes.

 

[excuseme]

I agree with the above suggestion by Joanne F and try his meat raw, cooking destroys so much of the natural goodness in the product. There are quiet a few companies who provide "complete" raw mince meals, some fresh and others frozen.

Wet Green tripe although it is incredibly stinky is so very irresistible to many dogs and it is full of good bacteria, enzymes and prebiotic benefits.

Carbohydrates / grains are not easy for dogs to digest, they are just cheap fillers that many companies use these days, so if he will eat and enjoy some small raw meals he will obtain probably a lot more goodness/nutrition than eating cooked and convenient processed kibbles.

When he is feeling better and his gums have settled, see if you can introduce some raw meaty bones, this will help clean his remaining teeth naturally and hopefully help keep gum and tooth desease at bay.

Poor chap, give him a hug from me.

 

[gypsysmum2]

The fact that the Diazepam worked is a big clue here. Diazepam calms anxiety. It he eats when he is on it but won't eat when not on it this indicates that anxiety is at the root of his issues.

One possibility is fear of pain. He remembers feeling pain when eating and now associates all food, except chicken, as a potential source of pain. Of course it is possible to make a home made diet around chicken and that is one course of action. I used to work with an Australian vet who advocated feeding raw chicken wings and nothing else. Not sure what ExcuseMe thinks of that as a balanced way to go. It would certainly be a test, assuming he likes his food raw, of whether there is any pain still present.

Another possibility is that his anxiety is being picked up from his family. Whenever food is being handled he picks up your mum's anxiety over whether he will eat or not. This is what the vet is hinting at with seeking the help of a behaviourist. It is much more common than you would think.

Could someone else feed the dog? If not, could your mum be persuaded to just put the food down and walk away, busy herself for ten minutes and then return. There should be no looking at the dog during meal times, no talking to the dog or anyone else about what is going on. If she could sing/laugh or do something else that means "happy" to the dog, during meal times, then that would help too. That does not mean hang around the food bowl singing and laughing! Perhaps she could pick up the phone and make or pretend to make a phone call that makes her laugh or sing.

As suggested above a change of bowl and a complete change of feeding station might help too. Any reminder of the pain/ anxiety he feels/felt around meal times might be helped if he is fed somewhere else, by someone else, in a different bowl etc. In other words, nothing to remind him of his previous pain and no picking up of anxious thoughts from his family.

 

[excuseme]

I can see no reason why chicken wings should not be used as the main part of a diet but I am sure that at some stage it would be beneficial to offer different meat varieties and important offal / organs for additional vitamins and mineral values.

I would suggest keeping his meat soft for a while until his gums harden up.

My daughter fed her dog chicken wings only for 1.5 to 2 years with no ill effect, but when he came back to live with us he was fed with a variety of raw!

 

[mckenzie]

Thank you all for the advice, really very much appreciated. Ill pass on all of the above & @gypsysmum2 - this especially makes a lot of sense, thank you.