Chocolate, I’ve heard, can have a cumulative effect, and the dangerous dose depends on the dog. I do know of dogs who have died from eating chocolate, and some who have come darn close, but emergency vets were able to pul them back. Definately not worth risking.
A lot of what you are seeing that your dogs won’t eat is a matter of can’t eat - take a good look at their teeth. Pure carnivore teeth. They have no mechanism for holding, grinding and tearing vegetables. They can do it eventually, but many seem to say “why bother?”
As for what my dogs won’t eat - they’ll try anything I’ll eat, so far, at least as far as mashing the heck out of it and then finally giving up. They sure make a mess out of peapods!
When my last dog was a puppy, I thought I’d break him of begging by giving him the left over hot peppers in the chinese food. I spent the next 13 years saving a bit for the dog from every dinner I had. At least I was re-enforcing my position as Leader of the Pack.
That dog would eat anything I could toss to him - popcorn, medication, carrots (dog was a fool for carrots) - if I could lob it in the air, he’d get under it and swallow it whole.
Except for shrimp and lobster.
I think the dog ate the tennis balls, but he would not eat shrimp or lobster.
Huh. Maybe that’s why Zoe won’t eat the Papa John’s peppers. Those are whole peppers, and I think every other kind of pepper we’ve given her was sliced. Maybe whole peppers are difficult for carnivore teeth to get a purchase on, but slices of pepper are easier?
We had a terrier who was the same way. She was given the leftover bits to gobble up, so the one day when my mom had a little bit of batter left, she was given her Very Own Pancake, only to turn up her nose at it until syrup was added.
She also would not only not eat jello, she would bark at it because it moved!
When given the milk and bits of leftover raisin bran, she would leave a licked-clean bowl with a little pile of very clean raisins in the bottom.
I don’t currently have a dog but there IS no food my neighbor’s dog won’t eat. I’ve seen it settle down before with an onion that my neighbor will give him just to munch on.
My dogs eat pretty much anything. Jasper is pickier than Bouncer.
Bouncer won’t eat mushrooms or garlic. He loves lettuce and broccoli and lots of other veggies. Jasper, not so much. He’ll spit out a lot of stuff I offer him, and make a big face at it. He’s hilarious.
My doberman, I’m reasonably sure, will eat anything at all. I haven’t tested widely mind you, but to pill her all we have to do is drop the pill in her food bowl. She doesn’t chew, so taste isn’t an issue.
The labradoodle will eat most things, but pill must be sneaked in via cheese or crushed up with sardines.
The lab-shepherd mix will try to eat anything you give him. He does not like pickles or olives.
The shepherd-wolfhound (we think, he’s very big at any rate) is not a big fan of fruit or vegetables, though he’ll eat apples and pears. He’s the pickiest, doesn’t show enthusiasm for anything not actually meat.
My jack russell eats pretty much anything and is especially motivated if there’s another dog around. But he won’t eat unless my husband or I am around. I’ll leave him a Kong stuffed with peanut butter to keep him entertained during the day and when I get home he greets me enthusiastically, fetches the untouched Kong and starts slurping away. Same with rawhide chews - my husband just went back to work so I stashed a few chews around the house in various hiding spots so he’d have something to do without human companionship and he didn’t touch them until hubby got home. Does anyone have any idea why he’d do this?
My beagles will eat almost anything with meat, but when I eat chiie I like it hot. They stand back about 2 feet from the bowl and wont close in. Sometimes they bark at it.
The English Bulldog is a frickin’ garbage disposal, but raw asparagus does not appear to translate as edible inside the confines of her thick little skull.
The Labrott will take and eat anything with grace and gratitude, except for green beans. I gave her one once. She took it. Looked at me like, “Um, what?” and then spat it out complete with ptha! sound.
We don’t give them any people food at all anymore. The Labrott (Bitz the Wondermutt) is 10 years old and gets pretty bad colitis if her diet consists of anything but her regular kibble and low-fat baked treats. She’s such a good girl, though, that even that boring, tasteless piece of what’s basically a cracker gets accepted with all the enthusiam she used to muster up for a saucy piece of pizza crust.
After my wife, there’s nothing in the world I love more than that dog, and including my wife, nothing in the world loves me as much as that dog. That’s not a crack against my wife, who loves me dearly, just a simple acknowledgement that no human can love as completely as a good dog.
Diet dogfood. The vet said it was time for a diet so I bought what looked like the best low-cal dry dogfood I could find; I don’t remember the brand. He refused to eat for four days! At that point I relented and bought him some real dry food and we are just trying to restrict snacks and get more exercise.
This is a dog that will eat paper towels, bugs, hot peppers, rat poison - anything basically. I saw him eat 3 small pieces of this dogfood and then druink huge amounts of water afterward each time.
