My Yorkie won't eat!!!
 

I have a 11 week old yorkie puppy. He is very healthy and of a normal weight. However, he doesn't choose to eat. I have tried canned food, dry food, cat food, even baby food. He simply won't eat it. I have been basically forcing the food down. I simply wipe a small bit of canned food onto the roof of his mouth so that he has to eat it. He does have the ability to eat both canned and dry food. He will occasionally eat very small bites independently (like once a week). I have taken him to the vet, they tell me to just keep trying. I thought he was just been spoiled and I decided he would eat when he was hungry, he didn't. He had a hypoglycemic induced seizure. The breeder told me if he doesn't eat every 4 hours to force him. I have been doing this for almost 3 weeks. Any ideas?

Yikes! Have you tried different brands of dry and canned food?

Have you tried cooking some food for him? Just try some chicken to start, and just boil it and cut it into small pieces. Or perhaps flavor the food a bit, maybe with a bit of sugar? That is odd that he doesn't want to eat at all.

Try sprinkling a little parmesan cheese on his food, perhaps those boiled chicken bits that fasteddie suggests? Something is definitely wrong here......Did the vet check his tonsils? Sometimes they won't eat if their tonsils are swollen.....

I hope and pray he'll be okay soon.

A couple of weeks ago Rudy quit eating and it was his tonsils, the vet gave him a shot and in one day he was better, I gave him antibiotics for a week. He is back to his bad self. I have heard of people scrambling an egg for there puppy. sometimes I think they are little toots and make us worry for nothing..........Cindy

Thanks for the ideas
 

Thanks for the ideas. I'll give them a try. :D I will also check with my vet about tonsils. He looked him over pretty close but didn't say anything about tonsils. :confused:

2 suggestions....

Try putting the food directly on the floor. Some Yorkies don't like to eat from a dish. I don't know why. LOL

You may also ask your vet to do a chem. panel and bile acid tests for Liver shunt. Just to be on the safe side. This can be a symptom of LS.

Good Luck

Welcome to YT CC's. Good suggestions for crowmtn!

I went through the same thing,here is what I did
 

Hi and welcome to YT!
I got my Yorkie when he was around 13-14 weeks old.I bought the canned food and dry food that the pet shop said he was eating. Well we got home and he didnt want it at all. He would sniff it once and didnt want any. I tried everything! I bought several brands of puppy dog foods.He would not go near it. I did however give him Nutri-cal at least 3 times a day everyday. He didnt even want much water. I wanted to pull my hair out I swear! I got his canned food and added water and sucked it up with a syringe and had to force feed him. It was terrible and there was a mess everywhere . I could only force feed about 1tsp at a time and then let him rest for 30 min.I did this at least 4-5 times a day and he would eat about 1.5 tsp each time total. I put it on the floor and and at least he licked some off but it was the size of a kidney bean amount! Finally I gave in and boiled chicken breast ,chopped it up into super tiny pieces and fed him out of my hand about 2 tbsp. He gobbled that right up! But after 2 days he didnt even want chicken or liver...nada! I went through this for over a month.It has taken me almost 2 months to get him to eat on his own.But now he sits impatiently while I mix his food. As soon as his little bowl goes down he runs.
All I can say is if your puppy has been checked by a vet ,which you say he has. The vet is right keep force feeding him and try everything. I was tired and pissed at the vet cause all he would say is " You are doing the right thing just keep doing what you have been doing and he will be fine. I thought he would be force fed forever. It was just like I had given birth. I didnt sleep well the first 2 weeks,taking him out of his crate in the middle of the night to go pee. I tried not feeding him until he was hungry. But that didnt work. I could tell he was soooo hungry but as soon as I would bring the food down he would sniff and walk away. So I guess what I wanted to tell you after this long story . This will pass and your pup will get the hang of it. I
reward my 5 1/2 month puppy everytime he uses the pee pad.So every time he pees on the pad he runs to me waiting for a treat. If he has an accident he gets no treat.They are very smart trust me! If I catch him doing his business on the rug I point to it immediately and say no! As soon as he sees that I point to it ,he runs off super fast and keeps staring at the poop he just did on the rug!
He has been doing well with paper training though and the accidents are much much less now.

Be patient and try cooking some chicken for him

Genie

thank you and potty training idea
 

Thanks so much for all the ideas. :D I have gone to the syringe idea with baby food in it. He better get the hang of this soon, or I might faint! :( After having 4 human children, he is requiring more than they did, I swear. I keep telling myself, this is a front loaded job. If I spend the time and do it right now I will reap the rewards for many years. :cool: I heard an idea I am going to try for potty training. They took one of the huge dog crates and opened it up and put it upside down. Then you put the 2 door ends together. This basically makes a confined area with 2 seperate sides and a plastic bottom. You put their food and bed etc on one side and then the potty pads on the other. After about a month, they recommend moving the bed side and the puppy should go to the potty side on his own. I am going to give it a try. I bought 2 huge crates, one for each level of my house. Sorry about the length! I'll keep you up to date. Thanks again!

I have the same problem with my 6 week old. He doesn't eat that much and when he does it's only in the morning/afternoon. The man at the pet store who sold him t use advised us to buy this high-calorie paste in a tube, for dogs, obviously. I just put 2 to 3 drops at a time on my finger and have him lick it off.

That must be nutrical or nutristat. That is supposed to help with the appetite and supplies vitamins that are needed. It is also good for helping to prevent hypoglycemia in the puppies.

Did you say 6 weeks? OR did you mean 16 weeks old? I havent heard of any person letting go of a yorkie pup younger than 8-10 weeks old.
If your yorkie isjust 6 weeks old then he will probably eat very,very little and might not want to eat at all.The paste is Nutri-cal and its great for them . I keep a tube of it in my purse/carrier always. So far I've been using the same tube for about 2 months and there's still about 1/4 tube left. As my Yorkie has gotten older I dont need to give him nutri-cal every day.


Gen

Actually, when I took him to the vets for his shot last Tuesday we found out he was born July 9th making him just over 8 weeks : )
Yes, the Nutr-cal is great for puppies http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/ima...lies/smile.gif

I just got my little Benjamin on saturday. He is a 10 week old teacup. He doesn't seem to want to eat unless i hand feed him..
The breeder gave me these sweet liquid vitamins to give him and he licks it all up so one day in a rush i put it on the plate with his food... now its the only way i can get him to eat... The vitamins will be gone soon.. i suppose i'll have to try some of these techniques...

Good luck

Have you tried hand feeding him some of his dry dog food? Sometimes when they're little, they will eat that way. I would try some boiled chicken or rice or maybe a little cottage cheese.

everyone has given great advice, but i still wanted to say i hope your baby is better soon! keep us updated on his eating!!

I'm having the same problem. My baby girl will eat, but not enough!

She's tiny enough as it is and has now lost 4oz, putting her under 2lbs.

I got some great tips in this thread, maybe some will work for you? I'm still trying them.

http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78182

Good luck!!

Chloe loves the Gerber meat sticks (as suggested by another YT member), btw!!!

Update on Little Benjamin..... I finely chopped up some apple and mixed it in with his food... and he seemed to like it alot.. he didnt eat it all.. But enough to not worry me... and with less effort on my end....

Also I squeeze a little bit of fish oil on top and he seems to like that too...

glad to know he is at least eating!!! keep us updated on how he is doing!!!

My yorkies did this for a while, i had to brown lean ground chuck and rinse it really good, boil chicken, or try chicken in the can. I do this whenever they decide not to eat. Good Luck!

This thread was started in 04.
wow I really wonder what has happened to the dog now 2 1/2 years later.lol

If you need to, you can get some Hill's Prescription Diet A/D from your vet and mix it with Rebound and use this in the syringe. Rebound is a liquid diet supplement that is also available thru the vets office.

I hate force feeding with a syringe but sometimes it has to be done.

What are your thoughts on Merricks?
 

I'm a new Yorkie owner, and would love to know everyone's thoughts on Merricks? Do you feel that the canned/dry puppy food is high quality and healthy? The ingredients sure seem to be, but I would love to know what others think before I buy. It seems that many on this site recommend it?!
THANK U ALL SO MUCH!:confused:

I don't like the term "tea cup" I always say that there is no such thing as a teacup yorkie ..but then find myself battling out of an argument. However 10 weeks is REAAAALLY young for a dog; especially a yorkie. I would try some chicken; cottage cheese; maybe a little rice? Anything in small proportions that is bland. Think if you had a really bad stomach ache what would you eat...when Bella doesn't eat sometimes I make her a Peanut Butter sandwich and cut it in half...breakfast and dinner :D she LOVES it.

It May be a little late
 

That happened to us, twice!! At first it was due to the reaction of shots! And she just would not eat, and then it had something to do with the tastebuds and her reaction. Go figure. And then, I complicated it by trying all of these different dog foods. Then we get caught up in the middle of the big recall, and here we go again.

Then the next time to add to the confusion of something I would never think of when she stopped eating and I took her in to the vet again. She was teething and imagine her pain and I did not know, so I'm trying all this food again thinking I might have slipped her some food from the recall that might not have been on the list! It took a while to figure out what was going on and to get her back on schedule, get her taste buds and system under control. But its usually stuff we least think about! Hope its a little insight!

My 10 week old 1.8 lb baby yorkie refuses to eat anything!
 

I don't know what to do. He's already had a hypoglycemic attack and a siezure. We've been microwaving baby food (like 7 seconds) and feeding it to him through a syringe. That's the only way he'll eat. He refuses to eat blended dry food mixed with yogurt. Ceasar wet food, other wet (very healthy food with vegies), dry food, baby food (if not via syringe), NOTHING!

Luckily he's up and around seemignly doing fine now, although he has been tremmoring when he's not comfortable with something. Seems fine though now that we are feeding him like 1/4 or 1/3 baby food jar (small) every 2 to 4 hours.

We do not have the money to board him at a hospital to be given fluids and fed properly and blood monitoring, etc... We payed an exorbitant amount of money for him from PetLand (mom fell in love) and we took him to the vet hospital saturday night and that cost another 450 bucks...

I'm at my whits end with this. I do not know what to do other than hand feeding him baby food for the next few weeks, and even after that I hope he isn't so used to syringe feeding that we have to do that for the rest of his life.

He has the beginnings of pneumonia according to the Sat vet visit. It went from kennel cough to pneumonia within a week... Ugh.

PLEASE HELP!

Brittany and Bentley:aimeeyork

I just figured it out --- It's the tv. It's on all the time and it's fairly loud because of mom's semi-hard of hearing issues. I put the tv onto light classical music and not 20 minutes he began to eat the beneful wet food!!! He didn't eat much as there wasn't a whole lot on the plate so I went and put more on a plate and microwaved it to take out the cold of the fridge and put him on my knee and held the plate. He ate like he was starving!! He at about half of what was on the plate!!! For a little guy like him, that's a lot!

So if anyone is having a similar problem with not eating or barely eating, think about the environmental noise in the house.... Could be loud radio on all the time or tv... Good ideas to think about.

HUGS

Brittany and Bentley:aimeeyork:thumbup::D

I TOTALLY second that. Maggy may wouldn't eat from a dish at first either. In trying to entice her to eat, I would put it on the floor in front of her and don't ya know she'd eat it off the floor but not her dish!! Eventually I started putting some in her dish and eventually she started eating from it. Good luck!

Oops, guess I should have read through all the posts before I replied here, lol. So glad you got it figured out and your lil one is eating now. Not all dogs are the same, some are shy, some are really outgoing, some need coaxing to come out of their shells and each one needs different things according to their personalities.

Man I am having this same problem!!

I, like most other people on the board, have tried nearly everything. Here's a synopsis:

First off, she hasn't consistantly lived with me, bc shortly after we received her, I found out I was expecting myself, and the morning sickness took me OVER, so she stayed w grandma for a few weeks 'til I recovered.

All of a sudden when she comes back, she loves me! so I know it's not separation anxiety (will follow me all around the house), but she will not eat (consistently).

First the breeder has us giving her organic food, which we softened with warm water. She ate this for a few weeks 'til we ran out once, and preparing for her arrival I had Plan Pro already in the house, so until the next shipment of the organic food came, I gave her the plan pro kibbles.

She ate this! Wouldn't go back to organic so we kept her there.
Now fast forward to spending time with grandma.

She returns, and won't eat nearly anything. We've come to the conclusion that someone there has been giving her table food, b/c whenever I eat, she'll run RIGHT to me for some of whatever I have.

I tried a little canned food. She ate one brand all up the first time. 2nd go round, didn't touch it.

Next brand, she ate it SO fast i thought I finally had a winner, but returned to her vomit all over the carpet. Needless to say she won't touch that brand anymore.

Now I alternate between can and kibble, but it's like she'll barely touch either. Would much rather whatever I'm eating and my brain says NO but my heart has given her chicken, fries, sweet cereal (like fruity pebbles), saltines and bread! ((so ashamed)). I just don't want her starving!

Please someone help. Everyone I know is saying "just leave the food down, she won't starve herself!" But she'll go to bed w me w.o touching it so I'm guessing she will :confused:

I love my lil girl... but being my first dog.. I'm so clueless!
She's 7 months now and about 2.5 lbs.