Dietary Novelties

Have you ever had a sit where the animal you have been caring for has had an unusual food fad?

For instance, we had a sit where the dog loved buttered toast with the humans for breakfast! The dog in question had her own little cupboard with her special bread and butter all ready for the morning. :dog::sweat_smile:

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OMG that is the cutest thing! haha I’d love to see a video of the dog eating his morning toast. We had a sit once where the dogs were fed 3-5 raw chicken necks with each meal…I guess this is somewhat common in other parts of the world a part of a meal for a dog but it was totally new to us as well as the amount of room they would take up in the fridge.

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Can’t quite remember very strange food fads, but on our one sit, the 2 doggies flatly refused to eat from bowls - their food had to be served on 2 sheets of kitchen roll each.
On another sit, the two chickens were mad about quick oats and we could entice them to do anything (eg go to the pen!) if we just shook a box of quick oats.
On some housesits, the dogs are crazy for pieces of raw carrots. But when I tried it at some other housesits where the dogs didn’t know carrots, they spit it out like hot potatoes after their initial curiosity :joy: I thought all dogs liked carrots!

Cat Dreamies - I do not know what they put in these but we have had a few outdoor cat sits where they have these treats and even if a cat is not interested in their food, or wet food or anything else, shake the Dreamies and they come running! We had a house that backed onto woodlands and fields in the UK and the cats would explore in there all day, if we shook the Dreamies we would suddenly see them running from quite a way off.

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I have never met a dog (or a cat) that did not go nuts for freeze dried liver. The owners at my last sit, that had two little fussy eaters, were amazed to see them begging for these treats. The dog tried to steal one from the cat.

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We also completed a sit where when we fed the cat it’s wet food, we also had to give a small spoonful to the dog so she didn’t feel that she was missing out even though she was having her dry food at the same time anyway! :cat::dog::smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

That is adorable! What dog could resist?
I had a cat sit wherein it ate raw chicken every meal. Thankfully the kind hosts had it preportioned and made it easy for me and kitty too. It seemed gross but the kitty, George, loved it. He was elderly and they answered to his every whim as did I.

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Yes, what do they put in Dreamies that make them so addictive?! I sat a dog and cat, and even the dog LOVED Dreamies. I was able to train them to a level of detente their owners had never experienced, thanks to Dreamies. :rofl::tongue::joy:

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I sat a poodle puppy who loved food so much she’d jump up and down like a spring — boing, boing, boing — while I prepared her food. And she’d run and gobble down the cat’s food, given half the chance. She also stole and ate human food, including a boxful of chocolates, according to her humans. They warned me. I had to watch out so she wouldn’t gobble up any of my food. But strangely, she refused various dog treats, maybe because she’d never encountered them before. I had bought them for her and ended up taking them home to my dog.

The two most recent dogs I sat loved them, but they had few teeth left, so one seemed dejected when he got a fat baby carrot. I ended up using a cleaver to split the fat ones apart for the poor little guy. He happily gobbled them up. :carrot:

I tried to be careful, because I imagined myself explaining to an ER doc that I’d injured myself while cutting carrots for a toothless dog, LOL.

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