Picky Eater's Choice
/Updated January 27, 2022
As first-time pup pawrents, we wanted to get everything “right” on the first go. But now that we’ve had the honour of being Kona’s hoomans for nearly four years we’ve learned that like with people, each pup has their own individual preferences and needs. This seems so obvious but it is also easy to forget. It took 1.5 years for Kona to realise all the nommies he’d been missing because he was such a picky eater. And as a family of food lovers, I’m happy that we’ve come a long way from the days of him flicking food across the floor or turning his face away from a “high-value” treat. He now scratches at his food cupboard and barks for more after dinner. And he seems to have reacquired a taste for food he used to like but grew tired of.
We researched a lot about Cotons before Kona’s arrival and knew they could be finicky eaters, so we expected him to have a discerning palate. But we did not expect him to be as picky as he was. We fed and continue to feed freeze-dried “raw”, dehydrated, air-dried, and lightly cooked fresh food in rotation. We started Kona out on My Perfect Pet’s Puppy Blend per our breeder’s recommendation. It is lightly cooked food that comes packaged in frozen bars and requires a bit of planning. That is, you have to remember to take the food out to defrost a few days at a time. We also tried the Stella & Chewy’s frozen raw dinner patties. The problem with these frozen/fresh food options is you cannot really leave them out for a pup to flick around and not eat. So much food went to waste. We tried so many things like pretending to compete for his food, spoon feeding, and hand feeding, adding toppers, etc. When he refused to eat, we offered him another option. Sniff, sniff. No good? Another option. We tried everything from Small Batch Pet to Primal Nuggets and Ziwi Peak. We would mix fresh fish with the freeze dried food and he’d pick out the fish and leave the rest. We’d boil fresh eggs for him but they had to be cooked just right, and he wouldn’t eat them if they were a day old either. He once even grew tired of fresh roasted chicken!
Picky Eater’s Choice
It’s always been a challenge to get me to eat “pet food” but I love my Stella & Chewy’s dinner patties and meal mixers!
After several months of this we realised we’d been unintentionally reinforcing his picky behaviour. One day we decided that we had to change our tactics. Mealtime became stressful and unnecessarily time consuming, and I was not going to let him refuse great quality food when other pups were starving. He’s a perfectly healthy pup with no allergies and tummy issues, so there was no reason for him to not eat. I even explained to him that he shouldn’t take his food for granted. Of course he didn’t understand me, but I had to try!
So we starved him out. It took less than a day for him to catch on that if he didn’t eat what we put out within 20 minutes, there wouldn’t be another option. And he ate! And he continued to eat without complaint — we thought hallelujah, we’ve cracked the code! That is, until several months later he’d get a little picky again and we’d give him a reset. After moving to San Francisco, we came across Nom Nom fresh food at an event. He seemed to enjoy the samples so we agreed to go on a trial with them. They are similar to My Perfect Pet in that the meals are lightly cooked and come frozen, but they were conveniently pre-portioned per bag for his weight. We thought we’d found a new alternative food to alternate with his patties and I also wanted to help him lose a little weight. We tried all the different recipes and his favourite was Beef Mash. But I noticed that there were a lot of potatoes in the meals and instead of losing weight, Kona was getting chubbier. Soon after he grew tired of the food and we ended up donating/sharing the unused meals with friends.
After our experience with Nom Nom, we decided to stop faffing about and stick with one brand for his base meal and at the time Kona would only consistently eat Stella & Chewy’s freeze-dried patties so that’s what we stuck with. More recently we noticed that he would eat food that he used to be picky about, but now liked again so we added other base meals to the mix. These days, Kona is no longer the picky eater he once was. He still has his preferences but I’m so amazed and grateful for all the variety he is able to eat and enjoy. In addition to Stella & Chewy’s, we also feed ZiwiPeak and K9Naturals for variety and he has no trouble having Stella for one meal and Ziwi or K9 for another. In case you’re wondering how all the variety affects his poos — they’re consistent and healthy.
Kona’s Top Foods:
Carrots, sweet potatoes, chard, broccoli, choy sum, tatsoi, spinach, peas, green beans, kabocha and pumpkin, courgette, gai lan, and lotus root. He really loves his greens! He also loves chicken, beef, pheasant, duck, turkey, pork, venison, lamb, sardines, salmon, smelt, tuna, cod, mackerel, arctic char and eggs cooked any way. All meat organs and muscle meat -- especially chicken hearts, gizzards, duck hearts, lamb and beef tongue. He’s a bit more selective about fruit — it has to be in peak season for him to enjoy. I don’t think he’s being difficult when he refuses fresh fruit. It simply doesn’t appeal to him at that given moment. He’ll eat the following occasionally but never consistently: apples, nashi, and strawberries. But he seems to love freeze dried fruit (won’t eat fresh banana but likes it dehydrated or in puppy froyo, fresh watermelon (but it tends to make his poo mushy so we don’t give it to him very often), honey, and coconut. He’ll also get the occasional cool treat (goat milk and frozen yogurt) on hot days and I’ve also allowed some grain free biscuits and even the occasional “junk” biscuit.
Supplemental Feeding:
We supplement Kona’s main meals with Green Juju / fresh lightly cooked greens from our garden, and Wildly Blended’s Bug Off. Full disclosure, this herbal blend is not his favourite but it’s been working to help keep fleas away so we love it. And we prefer to use natural preventatives whenever possible — he also prefers eating the powder to the smell of Wondercide sprays (which we use for added protection during flea season). When I give Kona a scoop of the Bug Off powder for breakfast it helps to add some fish oil to make it more palatable for him. As of this writing we’ve been using Dr Harvey’s Omega-3 blend.
We also like to add K9 Natural freeze-dried beef or lamb green tripe / frozen 1-2 lb.. chubs from GreenTripe.Com (which we defrost and portion out and refreeze). We rotate between freeze dried and fresh — freeze dried is more convenient and less pongy, but we like to give it “fresh” when possible and it’s also more economical. We defrost several days worth of tripe at a time for easier serving. If you’re unfamiliar with green tripe, it’s a superfood for dogs. Tripe is the nutrient-rich stomach lining of an animal and the 'green' simply means it isn't bleached or processed in any way.
If you’re looking for natural blends to help boost your pup’s fresh cooked food, Kona loves Bibim Paws Su-Paw Boost Probiotic Kimchi and Su-Paw Boost Organic Superfood Powder.
Pro-tip: When preparing fresh green tripe wear a mask if you’re sensitive to strong smells (you should have one readily available if you’re reading this in 2021).
Even though Kona’s become less picky about his food as he’s gotten older, it’s always been difficult to find a vitamin or supplements that he’ll consistently eat. So much has gone to waste, but he loves his PETIPET bars: the Turmeric Bars and Mobility Bars are his favourite.
Treats Galore:
Thinking back, Kona never had many treats in his food cupboard prior to moving to the Bay Area, probably because he was so picky and we got tired of wasting food. He liked jerky, chicken hearts, liver, minnows and fish chips, but it wasn’t until after we moved back to San Francisco that he began to expand his palate. I always felt bad that he wasn’t getting enough variety so we continued to learn more about nutrition and started to try more small batch single or limited ingredient treats and meal toppers from smaller companies. The original brand that helped Kona make the connection that the refrigerator was a magical place where fresh delicious food appeared was MonMo Treats. Sadly, they closed shop at the end of 2020. And so we were forced to look elsewhere for fresh treats. Now Drooling Monsters, Farm Hounds (save $20 off your first purchase with this link), Little L’s meat brittle, Soul’y Raw and Three Loves NYC have become part of his regular treats/topper rotation. Other treats that Kona has always loved and also purchase in rotation include Icelandic+ cod chips and cod skin rolls, and Vital Essential’s freeze dried bully sticks and minnows.
We will also give medium or soft chews — whether as tendon, poultry feet, or neck bones. These days it’s freeze-dried bullies or dehydrated poultry neck bones (always supervise your dog when feeding bones, chews and at mealtime in general). We love to support Aloha Made: Paradise Pawz, Calvin & Susie, Hawaii Doggie Bakery, being Kona’s faves. And cool treat options include: The Bear and The Rat (the OGs and Kona’s go-to), Boss Dog, Swell, Primal Goat Milk.