As you all know, Sadie is a picky eater. Some days she acts like she’s starving and will eat anything in sight. Other days she will only eat her dog food if I spoon feed her a few bites. At the moment, the most frustrating aspect of these eating habits is portion size. Of course Sadie’s vet has recommended the appropriate amount of food for Sadie’s dinner. But when I prepare the half cup of dry food mixed with a little wet food that the vet recommends, Sadie barely eats half of it. So the next night I give Sadie a smaller portion, which she finishes immediately and begs for more food. So the night after that I give Sadie a larger portion, but she won’t eat any of it and it all gets thrown out. I just can’t predict how much Sadie will be willing to eat at any given time. Some nights I give her a full portion and she eats only half. I wake up the next morning planning to throw away the leftover food, only to discover that Sadie has gotten up in the middle of the night and eaten every bite. Sadie is certainly talented at keeping me on my toes and making sure our life together never gets boring.

This post is part of the Pet Parade blog hop hosted by Rascal and Rocco, Bionic Basil, Love Is Being Owned By a Husky, and M.K. Clinton.

So yesterday at work, I’m sitting at my desk, typing on the computer. Sadie has had her office snack and I thought she was asleep on the other side of my desk. Then all of a sudden I feel something knock into my foot. I look down and find Sadie’s empty treat dispensing ball resting against my foot and Sadie staring up at me with puppy dog eyes. It was perfectly clear that Sadie wanted me to fill her ball with food. I couldn’t believe the smart and adorable way she was telling me she was hungry. I got up right away and filled her ball with her dry food, and Sadie immediately began playing with it. She ate every last crumb of her kibble! I still can’t always predict when Sadie will feel like eating, but it makes me feel good to know that Sadie can and will tell me when she’s hungry.

This post is part of the Tasty Tuesday blog hop hosted by Sugar the Golden Retriever and Kol’s Notes.

Most pet owners have a specific spot set up for their pets to eat, where their food and water dishes remain on a daily basis. This is typically in the kitchen area, as it is usually the easiest place in the house to clean up after messy pets. What I would like to know is how many pets actually stick to this arrangement? If you hand them food outside of this area, that’s a different story. But is Sadie the only one who does not like to stay in one place while eating?

The photo above is Sadie’s everyday set up for food and water. Notice by the carpet that this is in my living room, not the kitchen. I tried to keep her food and water in the kitchen for a while, but Sadie often dislikes the kitchen floor and would simply refuse to eat or drink if she had to walk on that floor to do so (click here to read the full post about Sadie’s Flooring Phobias). By moving the bowls into the living room I have a better chance of getting her to use them, but Sadie just can’t seem to stick to one place. If she’s in the mood for dry food, I often find a trail of kibble leading from the living room into my bedroom. Sadie takes mouthfuls of the food from her bowl in the living room and brings it to the bedroom, where she drops it on the floor and then chooses which pieces she will eat. Thankfully she does not do this with wet food. Instead, Sadie sometimes completely ignores her wet food when it’s in her bowl in the living room. But if I move the bowl into the bedroom with me, Sadie will suddenly decide to eat the food. And although she has a water bowl in the living room as it’s part of a set with the food bowl, Sadie usually won’t drink water from that bowl. Instead I need to keep a separate water bowl in my bedroom for her, where she happily drinks and stays hydrated. And if you give her a treat, you never know where it will end up. I think I’ll need a whole other blog post to talk about her burying and reburying treats all over the house. I’m just glad that I’ve gotten used to most of Sadie’s quirky eating habits and can anticipate what needs to be done to make sure she gets the proper nutrition every day.

This post is part of the Tasty Tuesday blog hop brought to you by Sugar the Golden Retriever and Kol’s Notes.

So I was refilling Sadie’s dog bowl yesterday, and when it was full, I offered her the bowl. She came over, sniffed it, and then walked away. That’s not unusual for Sadie. She’s a grazer, so she eats randomly throughout the day and I figured she just wasn’t hungry at the time. Since I already had the dog food out, I decided to refill the baggie of food I keep in the bag I take to work everyday. I took the new baggie of food and brought it to the bed, where I dumped out the rest of my work bag to go through it and rearrange things. While I was going through my stuff, Sadie started snooping around on the bed. When she noticed her baggie of food, she started pawing at it. I decided I’d better open it quickly for her, or I’d end up with a hole in the bag. As soon as the baggie was open, Sadie started eating. Apparently food in her bowl is unacceptable, but the same food in a baggie becomes irresistible.

This post is part of the Tasty Tuesday blog hop brought to you by Sugar the Golden Retriever and Kol’s Notes.

Once again I was woken up in the middle of the night by strange noises coming from the living room. This time I heard what sounded like something rolling around on the floor, coupled with intermittent crunching sounds. When I got up to investigate, I found Sadie in the pitch darkness playing with her treat/food dispensing ball. Technically the model we currently use is made for cats, but it was pretty, and pink, and is actually a round ball that Sadie can successfully roll, unlike many of the strangely shaped treat dispensing toys made for dogs. Anyway, Sadie was head butting the ball around the floor until some of her kibble fell out. Then she would sniff the pieces of dry food and pick only certain ones to eat. That meant that there was a trail of rejected food all over the living room floor, marking the path that Sadie was rolling her ball. Since I was now fully awake, I stayed and watched the proceedings. She would use her head to roll the ball around until food dropped out, but occasionally the ball would hit an obstacle and get stuck. She would then make frustrated noises and swipe at the ball with her paw, trying to dislodge it. Of course I would jump in and rescue the ball if she couldn’t unstick it, especially when it went under the couch. I ended up having to refill the ball twice before she was tired of the game and had a full tummy. While I would prefer she play and eat at a more reasonable hour, I’m glad that turning her food into a game can sometimes entice my picky eater to eat full servings of her actual dog food.

This post is part of the Tasty Tuesday blog hop brought to you by Sugar the Golden Retriever and Kol’s Notes.

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