As pet sitters in Mesa, obviously we feed dogs as part of our job. And sometimes our dog clients won’t eat. So what do we do? Well, your pet sitter comes armed with several tricks for this situation.

First we have to decide if it is due to illness or something else. Oftentimes, our pet family members get sad when we go away and so they won’t eat. Most of the time it due to the fact that your dog is missing you. If a dog doesn’t want to eat for one meal, generally we are not overly concerned with it and will let the dog eat as much or as little as it wants. But because we don’t want your dog’s blood sugar to be effected by not eating, your Mesa pet sitter will keep a vigilant eye on the situation.

Let’s say we go to the next visit and your pup is still not eating. Here are several things we might try:

1. Hand feeding them the kibble. Yup, that means picking the pieces of kibble up and putting it near your dog’s mouth to encourage them to eat. This will sometimes help. It’s as if they say, oh yea, I need to eat something, and do.
2. If that doesn’t work we might try to microwave the food which will cause the smells in the kibble to come out stronger. Since a dog lives through smells this will often help stimulate their appetite as well.
3. Dump all their food out of the bowl back into the container then refill their bowl in front of them. Reverse psychology tells your dog, ‘HEYYYY new food, yay. Let’s eat.’
4. We might also try adding warm water to their kibble and making a gravy. We might also combine this with putting the food in the microwave.
5. We might try mixing in a small teaspoon of yogurt to coat the kibble to encourage them to eat. Most dogs like yogurt and it’s not full of a lot of sugar or artificial sweeteners can be ok in small amounts.
6. Another trick might be to mix in a little bit of wet food (with client permission). This might be one of our last ideas though because sudden changes in a dog’s food like that can disrupt their digestion and is generally not encouraged. But it is important to get them to eat, so this might be one idea.
7. Finally we might mix in pieces of treats among the kibble that the owner had given them before.

So if for some reason your dog stops eating, these are some ideas you can try as well. If a dog stops eating for more than a day or two even with trying these ideas, a trip to the vet is in order because something else is going on then.

If after trying these things and your dog still won’t eat, we will contact you and most likely take your pooch into the vet to be sure nothing else is going on. But isn’t it nice to know that your Mesa pet sitting professional is on the job with so many tricks up our sleeves?