I can't recall ever having a problem with Ella and her food – and, except after running, of course, because then it wasn't so careful how much you put in, she thought. Boyo is a completely different story. Oh my God, what a fucking muppet I have when it comes to food.
Primarily he had a very sensitive stomach as a puppy and young dog. Shit (all pun intended), what problems I had finding a food that worked for him. For a while I thought he had giardia (parasite) because his best friend got it, but thankfully he got away with it. However, his sensitive stomach grew on him and now, thankfully, he can eat completely normal dry food and does not react to it.
Men.
Men.
He is when a dog (serious #facepalm on that one). Uncastrated, in addition. So he reacts when the bitches around here run. In and of itself, I can say in his favor that he does not overreact in any way. The first time I noticed anything was when he mostly lay around feeling sorry for himself (I'm laughing as I write that, for it really seemed that he felt so sorry for himself), and if I remember correctly he was a bit ridiculous with the food for a week or so.
And that is it's the food thing that makes me want to tear my hair out sometimes.
Right now have he has realized that he does not need to eat during the day. He doesn't eat breakfast, and not in the afternoon either. Now during the Easter weekend he has instead eaten late in the evening/night (it should be added that my circadian rhythm is very disturbed when I don't have times to fit).
And I am I'm sure you're not alone in thinking that it's awful to present food, especially if you go the extra mile and mix the dry food with some wet food to make it extra tasty – and the dog vomit does not touch the food!!! 😮 It gets mushy after standing for so many hours, so it has happened that I had to throw away an entire case because it turned out to be disgusting.
Let me be a bit long-winded for a moment; when Ella was little she grew very slowly. She was tiny as a puppy (people thought I was out walking the cat), and I wanted her to grow up. The tip I was given was to reduce the number of times she was fed each day, which ended with her eating once a day. I don't remember if it made any difference to how she grew up either. Now she never became a large dog – she was quite short (almost two decimetres lower than Boyo) and a skewer throughout his life.
But when I thinking about Boyo and how he manages his food intake, I thought of it, and even though he's an adult now, I've still started feeding him ONCE a day (a couple of days ago), just to see if it makes a difference. The first day he ate everything he was given in one sitting. I was super happy and thought YES!!! The next day he ate maybe a third and left the rest, to my chagrin. However, he had eaten everything when I woke up the next day.
This too however, eating once a day is something we will test for a while longer to be able to evaluate it in a meaningful way. And I do know that I have a very naughty dog, and he must have something to be mad about, so why not the food!? #facepalm
Plus, of course, to I'd love to see him gain a kilo or two in weight. He's not skinny, but quite thin. Ideally, I'd like him to go up because of muscle, but as it stands right now, we won't start it until later in the fall. SMHI's forecasts for the next ten days say that the temperature will reach around eighteen degrees at most, day time. This means that very soon it will be too hot for both him and me, and I'm also not done with my radiation treatment – or recovery from chemotherapy and radiation. So it might be good if Boyo stays at the same weight until then, then we'll get to it.
Now it is here not a new problem. I've tried, for example, walking more with him (before chemotherapy, in other words) when he was bad at eating, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. We can go for a long walk, and when we come in and he gets the food served he looks at it, maybe take a few pieces that he drops on the floor, and then walk away. That's another #facepalm at that, because I quite often have my kitchen floor covered with dry food. #numerousfacepalms
The funny thing is because there is a difference when we have other dogs here. When one of our day dogs is here, then it's certainly possible to eat as well as you like, basically any time of the day. Especially the one, who also eat here. The other eats at home, and can't be in the kitchen when Boyo eats because she's so crazy about food and all sonic would eat his food before he could blink. 😀 He eats quite slowly, company or not – which is actually a wonder, considering he more or less inhaled his food when he was little.
And for it who wonders what I feed him, so it has been since the time of special food (puppy- and the young dog's stomach) varied between Doggy Original and Axess Basic. I have no need to brag about the crappy food I feed my dog, and considering how nice he is in his coat, how completely ok he shits (except when he is stressed or needs to empty his entire bowel) then I see no reason to waste my money on branded feed. Ella ate Axess Basic for almost her entire life, and worked just fine on it. And if you haven't discovered it yourself, I can gossip that both of these feeds exist (big sacks!) at Rusta or ÖB (don't remember which), cheaper than both Willys and Ica.
I know that it may sound like Boyo is a really crazy dog (and he certainly is, but not only) and that I think he's a piece of shit (which he in and of himself can be, occasionally), but the fact is that he is an incredibly nice dog. He is kind on the verge of stupid, he is positive, love people, think he's a lapdog, he has a clear of- and on mode, which is great, he is easy to get along with, easy to handle.. A fantastic dog, quite simply. ♥