Enough evidence shows that dry food is much better than wet food for your dog’s nutritional needs. Some of the things that make dry food better than wet food include the texture, which is crunchy, and its ability to build stronger teeth, gums and improve breath. Dried foods also come with quality ingredients that you do not find in other ordinary dog recipes.
Compared to wet foods and other raw foods, dry foods provide value for money irrespective of how expensive they are. Even with all these fantastic qualities, some dog owners still ask this question, how to get my dog to eat dry food?
Some Best Dry Dog Food In The Market:
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Why Your Dog Will Not Eat Dry Dog Food
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It is frustrating when you buy the most quality dry dog food, but your pet sniffs at it and walks away. If on the other hand, you give the same dog, wet food, it will eat to the last morsel. What issues could make your dig snub dry dog food?
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Habit
Dogs, just like humans, are sticklers to habit. It is hard to change a pattern, especially if it makes you comfortable. If you feed your dog, the same kind of food repeatedly, switching to a new diet may prove hard. However, you can accomplish this by changing the diet gradually, which gives the dog plenty of time to adapt to the changes.
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Food appeal
Wet foods come with more appeal than dry foods because the manufacturers add more tasty ingredients to their recipes that add to the flavor and taste of the food. Some of the ingredients include fat, oil, salt, and sugar, among others. All these ingredients appeal to the dogs taste buds such that if you offer them dry food, they will not eat it due to the flatness despite the health benefits.
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Fussiness
Some dogs are fussy, lazy eaters. Most dry food recipes require chewing of whole ingredients, which may require jaw activity. Some of the wet food recipes, on the other hand, have easy to chew kibbles or patties dogs can eat without much effort.
How To Encourage Your Dog To Eat Dry Food
Dry food may contain more nutrients than a wet formula, but dogs do not know this and will most likely go with the wet diet over the dry one. However, you can manipulate your dog to start liking the dry food formula by carrying out a few “tricks”.
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Mix dry and wet food
The first step to making your dog start to like dry food is by introducing the diet gradually. During the dogs feeding time, feed it with a little of the dry food, mixed with a bit of the wet food, by having more of the wet food in the bowl, to begin with. Your dog may still not want to touch the dry food and might opt to eat the wet meal and leave the dry food, but this should not alarm you.
With time, they will start nibbling on the dry food too. Once the dog begins to get around to eating the dry food, reduce the amounts of wet food, and add the dry food diet until all the dogs can eat is dry food. If you have a fussy dog that does not want to eat dry food for one reason or the other, you can use the same trick wet and dry mixing trick.
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Mixing wet and dry food makes the meal more delicious and appealing for the dog’s taste buds. Feeding the dog with dry food with gravy ensures that your pet gets all the nutrients it needs from the dry recipe than it would from an-all wet dog food formula.
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Add hot water to the dry food
Sometimes the dog may refuse to eat the food because it is too dry and hard to consume. You can make the food friendlier by adding some hot water to the diet. The hot water softens the dry kibbles making them more comfortable for the dog to chew and digest.
Hot water also brings out the flavors of the dry meal, making smell better. Continue adding small amounts of hot water to the dry kibbles and continue reducing the amount you add until the dog starts to eat the dry food without any water in the diet.
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Warm the food
Besides adding hot water to the dry formula, another way to make the dry kibbles more appealing to the dog is by popping the meal into the microwave for a few seconds. Warming the food releases the flavors of the food, making the smell come out more. Heating the kibbles also releases the fat molecules that emit an appealing smell that catches the dog’s attention and heightens the appetite.
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Upgrade to super-premium formulas
Dry dog food formulas come in different types and brands. Though the majority of the brands come with claims that they have the best dry food formulas, not all the claims are valid. Some premium dg brands have high contents of real animal proteins that are better than those of other brands are.
If you try one brand and notice that your dog does not like the taste, try to upgrade to a super-premium brand that comes with more quality meat with tasty flavors. The cost will be higher than that of ordinary premium foods, but it will be worth the value once your dog starts to enjoy the new formula. It is also wise to try out with a different range of flavors until you find the perfect one for your dog.
Wrapping it up
It is frustrating when you go out of your way to please your dog, but he refuses to eat your choice of dry food. Do not give up and when you notice that your dog hates the menu, try not to buy in large quantities until you can work your way into making the dog agree to eat the food again. The above tactics will go a long way in ensuring that you will not have to throw away any opened bags of dry food again.
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Source: https://petstutorial.com
Category: DOGS
