E5: When your dog doesn’t eat

Listen to episode 5. Available wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Judge stopped eating this week. Bruce was away, Judge spent it at daycare and did not enjoy it, and now Bruce is home and Judge is mad at him. Ben switched Bowie's food so many times that he started handing rejected bags off to neighbours in Toronto when Bowie decided he was done; now, alone in the flat, Bowie's food can sit untouched for an hour, and at his cousins' place with three other dogs eating alongside him, he finishes it immediately. Makenzie eats from a bowl that is held, at the right height, by a person who stays.

In all three households, the bowl was never just about the food in it.

This is a conversation about what actually changes when a dog stops eating the way we expect.

I tried meatballs spaced across the plate, tried spoon-feeding, tried every food including one from a Seattle shop I could watch them cook through the window. I followed Makenzie through the flat with her bowl in my hands for weeks, adjusting the temperature, the topper, the room, certain the right version had to exist. Then one evening I knelt on the floor with the bowl on my lap instead of carrying it after her, and she came and sat down and ate. The food hadn't changed. I had stopped walking away.

The conversation moves through what owners consistently report about a dog's appetite tracking their emotional state more than their menu. Through the research on how much individual dogs differ in food motivation, and how little that variation has to do with what's actually in the bowl. Through Bruce coming home to a dog who isn't ready to forgive him yet, and Bowie eating instantly surrounded by his cousins after ignoring the same food alone.

Sometimes what the bowl is asking for has nothing to do with what's in it.