Picky Eaters
Welcome to my blog. If you’ve reached this page, it means that you have a picky eater canine family member.
What generally happens is that you get this beautiful puppy. Not knowing what to feed them, you experiment with a couple of brands, trying to find the ones that they will eat. Then, when they start teething and slow down their eating, you change their food again. And because they are such very smart dogs, they have already been trained to the cycle on if they want something different, they simply refuse the food they are given, especially if they realize they will get better food as a reward.
Due to their Husky heritage, they will often not eat for a day or two if their caloric expenditures are low. Don’t panic! This is normal and no reason to change out their food! They also tend to be grazers, just grabbing a bite here or there throughout the day.
Pomskies will not starve themselves, regardless of how much they want you to give them a different variety of food, or hold out for the yummy people food they have been given.
What the breeders are seeing on the social media pages is that this cycle of dogs not eating breakfast and then giving treats/canned food/higher calorie food is causing some Pomskies to be overweight. Weight on this dog is not good at all, difficult on their joints, causes luxating patellars, and even canine diabetes. Pomskies are designed to be muscular and athletically built. You want them to be in the ‘ideal’ category on the Body Condition Index.
So what can you do?
Don’t change out their food at all and make them eat what they are given. They may go without for a day or two but will finally eat because they are hungry. Don’t give in - realize they will not starve themselves.
Switch between 2-3 flavors of the same dog food, even mixing the bags together, but never going beyond these. I personally feed Purina Pro Plan and switch between the proteins. This also prevents protein sensitivities from developing as well.
Watch their weight and adjust the quantity of food from there. You do not want an overweight Pomsky, regardless of how cute it might be. Puppies are naturally chubby but after 5-6 months of age, they should be within the “ideal” category of the graph shown below.
