We’ve decided to go back to giving homemade dog food to our dogs. Oscar will stay on his Hill’s Science puppy food til he’s a year old. For Rita, we had switched her to a high protein storebought food but added cooked rice, peas, carrots, boiled eggs and pumpkin. Now that Oscar is going on six months old, I wanted to start adding a bit of the homemade ingredients to his regular dog food. Canned pumpkin is so good for dogs so I started with that. Each month, I’ll add something – peas, carrots, brown rice, ground beef, chicken livers, boiled eggs, etc.
Yesterday I started with the pumpkin. Once a day I’ll add 1 tsp. of canned pumpkin. Oscar has eaten the same food since we got him so I wasn’t sure how he was going to react to something different in his food bowl.
I put his regular amount of food, added in about 1 tsp. of pumpkin, stirred it all up and gave it to him.
He’s a fast eater and about the time he finished eating, Addie walked out of her room and Oscar started barking like a crazy dog. It was that shrill, urgent bark. I asked Addie to see what he was barking at . . it’s usually a microscopic bug! She said “I don’t know. He’s just looking at his food bowl.” I asked her to make sure there wasn’t a bug in his food bowl. She looked and said no. She walked away and he kept barking and barking. Vince was upstairs and he hollered down and said “What’s wrong with Oscar?” I told Vince I didn’t know but I’d get up and see. I walked over and looked around; couldn’t see anything that would have him upset but he kept barking. I realized he was actually barking at the empty food bowl. He wanted more pumpkin!
I got the bowl and put it in the living room where he couldn’t see it so he stopped barking.
Later, Vince came in and brought him into the living room to play. Right off the bat, Oscar noticed the food bowl and started barking again. Vince said “Do you think he wants more and that’s why he’s barking?” YES! He’s a determined little dog. I’m more determined and was not giving in so he didn’t get more pumpkin last night.
I put the food bowl in one of the drawers of a chest in the living room so he couldn’t see it and he stopped barking.
I could be wrong but I don’t think we’ll ever have trouble getting Oscar to eat his food.
Nelle Coursey says
My dogs love the pumpkin as well.
DebMac says
Our dogs loved pumpkin as well, one of them would lick the pumpkin off the dry food and stand there waiting for more pumpkin. Sometimes, she would go ahead and finish the dog food but more often not.