Maxx The Picky Eater

[LSU2018]

This is Maxx. He is a spoiled, mouthy, demanding, sneaky, and loving, brat.

He will be four years old come December 11th. He is a big lug and a great Dad. He still leaves a few crumbs in his bowl every day for his bratty daughter Tamar, and his rock head son Goliath to scramble over.

My biggest problem with Maxx is his eating habits. I am trying to decide if I should ignore him or to give in again. Maxx often just stops liking his food, and he stops eating it. The longest I have sat him out is three days.

He will like it just fine for months, then decides he doesn't want it. If I put the tiniest amount of people food in with his food, he will eat it. Doesn't matter if it is soup, bread,vegetables, fruit, or meat, he will eat it.

He has done this before. In fact, he has done this three times before. The other times I used store samples to find a food that he will eat, then I wean them over to the new food. The other four are never a problem. They eat anything they can get in their mouths, that is why I have to watch them like a hawk. They are so used to my hand and arm being down their throats, to remove crap that has no business down there, that they don't even blink when I go in for the deep retrieve.

I really don't mind putting something a little special in his food, but on the other hand, I am not sure that is something I should do on a daily basis. I really don't want to have to go  through another new food switch over. I keep telling myself, if he gets hungry enough he will eat, but after three days when he doesn't eat I cave.

Advice friends. I know I am likely thinking with my heart and not my head, so I need help.  I am sure someone has had this problem, and has a solution that is loving and fitting.

I had a red and white Heeler mix (I think) that wandered up in 2011, I called him Max, too. Extremely loyal but extremely mean to anyone he didn't know. One day he stopped eating and couldn't walk. I knew he was on his last leg because he was an adult when he wandered up (I'm guessing a hunting dog that didn't hunt anymore and was dropped off in my neighborhood) and I'd had him for 8 years. He'd made his way to the side of the deck and was laying there one winter morning so I covered his body with a blanket and sat there with him for a couple of hours, until the sun went down. Later that night it started raining real hard so I ran outside to move him to a dry spot and he wasn't there. I grabbed a flashlight and started down the stairs when I saw him laying at the bottom, he'd passed on. So I picked the poor little guy up and put him in a dry spot and covered his body with a dry blanket. 

This came up on my timehop last year.