Samoyed are known for their fluffy, white coats and their independent nature – but also for their sensitive tummies and picky eating behaviour. In the two years I have been an active member of several Samoyed communities, I have read countless posts about “My Samoyed is a picky eater” or “My Samoyed won’t eat his food” and often also “My Samoyed has recurring diarrhoea”. In my personal experience, picky eating and sensitive digestion go hand in hand, in which case the pickiness is just a symptom. Also, this phenomenon is not exclusive to Samoyeds and can affect a dog of any breed.
There are a number of reasons why a dog might refuse to eat – from illness to stress. In our case, there was a little more behind it than just a dislike for food, which is exactly why I have put this post together: to help other dog owners determine whether something else might be going on.
Is my Samoyed a Picky Eater or is a Sensitive Digestion to blame?
If sensitive digestion is the cause, the dog might (or might not) show one or several of these symptoms:
- Picky eating
- Eating grass/plants or other inedible objects
- Eating poop (their own or other animal poop)
- Lip licking
- Stretching (especially after meals)
- Hunched posture
- Restless behaviour after meals
- Stubbornness
- Impulsiveness
- Reactivity
- Increased fear / reduced resilience
- Lethargy (or sometimes just being a little less active)
- Throwing up bile or regurgitation
- Little or no food motivation
- Recurring diarrhoea or loose stools
- Smelly farts
- Itching
Banshee displayed 15 out of these 17 symptoms during the first 1 1/2 years of her life and most of them were incredibly subtle and easy to dismiss. I didn’t really start to notice most of them until I was already suspecting that something in her food was not agreeing with her. However, a couple of these symptoms don’t necessarily have to mean that something is wrong with your dog or your dog’s food. Poop eating or picking up everything on walks are normal dog or puppy behaviours and can occur in completely healthy dogs. Some dogs enjoy grass as a tasty snack. For us, though, they were a symptom and improved a lot after we had adjusted her diet.
It is wrong to assume that a change in food will automatically fix reactivity, fear, or other behavioural issues, but the wrong food that causes pain or discomfort can easily worsen these problems.
This is a list of everything that improved once we found the right diet:
- No more picky eating
- No more diarrhoea
- Poop eating decreased significantly
- Picking up and eating random things decreased significantly
- Much more treat-motivated
- Less stubborn and impulsive
- More responsive to reactivity and confidence training
- Improved ability to handle triggers
Banshee’s Food Journey
But let’s have a look at Banshee’s culinary journey in detail:
I knew that Samoyeds were picky eaters and often had sensitive digestion when Banshee moved into my home, but still, I was determined to give regular kibble a go. After all, my last dog (a Labrador mix) lived to the old age of 14 eating regular dog food.
We started with a popular German dog food brand with chicken as the main protein source and realised quite quickly that it wasn’t working for us. Banshee liked it well enough at first but soon became picky with her food and didn’t eat nearly as much as she should have given that she was a growing puppy. She was also itchy, often regurgitated her food, and had inconsistent, often soft poops. When we saw the vet for our vaccination appointment, he told us that chicken allergies were quite common and that we should try a different protein. The brand didn’t make puppy food without chicken, so after some research, we settled on Purina Pro Plan Lamb Medium Puppy for Sensitive Digestion.
I was very happy with my choice. It was an international, well-researched brand that offered both puppy and adult food. Banshee, however, was a more special case. She seemed to like her new kibble at first but started her picky behaviour once again after a couple of weeks. I believed that it was just the famous Samoyed pickiness as she wasn’t particularly treat-motivated either. Her stool improved, but even while she was on Purina, she had more episodes of diarrhoea than I ever remembered my last dog having in her entire life. I put it down to her puppy habit of eating everything under the sun, including other animals’ poop. I now know that I was wrong about that, as well.
A few months later, she refused to even touch this kibble, throwing up bile from going hungry for too long and continued to eat everything else she could find. I even considered the fact that she might be suffering from Pica, but I decided to give a different food a try. So we journeyed into the world of wet food according to my vet’s suggestion as she clearly didn’t like the kibble we were offering, but not before running a blood test and faecal test to make sure she wasn’t sick. All of the tests came back without results – Banshee was a healthy puppy on paper.
Wet food was not a success, either. We tried different brands and different proteins, and while she seemed to like reindeer somewhat, Banshee would only eat for a few days at a time and then go on a hunger strike again, only consuming what she needed to survive. She was also still suffering from recurring diarrhoea. I was desperate and at my wit’s end because my otherwise healthy Samoyed was losing weight and throwing up bile. In our desperation to get her to eat something, we started cooking meat and rice for her, which she gulped down greedily. That was the only thing she would eat no matter what, but it wasn’t a balanced meal. My vet suggested prescription food as a long-term solution, but I didn’t feel like she would like that any more or less than everything else we had tried so far.
A Nutritionist was our Answer
Almost a year after Banshee had moved into our home, I decided to consult a nutritionist, which turned out to be the best decision I could have made for her. Together, we went through Banshee’s vet records, analysed her eating behaviour and came to the conclusion that home-cooked food would be the best option for her long term, as she seemed to love cooked beef and rice. We considered a raw diet, as well, but decided against it. I had a couple of reservations about germs and cooked food is easier on the digestive system, so it seemed a wiser choice for my dog, whose tummy was clearly not happy with the foods we tried so far. We also had the option of cooking muscle meat along with organ meat to make it balanced – or just cooking muscle meat and balancing it with a mineral and vitamin mix. I chose the second option as that seemed a lot less work (yes, this step is important for later discoveries). A couple of days after our consultation, I received a balanced meal plan with shopping lists and cooking instructions from my nutritionist.
I want to be clear that I never would have attempted to assemble a balanced diet on my own. Dog nutrition is a whole science and easy to get wrong and I was very intimidated by the prospect of being 100% responsible for my dog’s health and well-being in this way. Fortunately for me, the personalised booklet I received had all the information that I needed and I was able to e-mail our nutritionist with questions at any given time. Almost two years later, I am still in regular contact with her and we have had smaller consultations since to make adjustments and discuss supplements. Once I had found an affordable meat vendor and shopped for all the ingredients, I was ready to start the home-cooked dog food journey.
At first, everything went exceptionally well. Banshee loved her meals (made up of cooked beef, cooked rice/wholewheat pasta/potatoes, vegetables, oils, and mineral powder) and devoured every last crumb. She was a little less prone to diarrhoea, but still not completely diarrhoea-free. And then, about three months into home-cooked meals, she stopped eating and seemed a little more tired than usual. Again. We went back to the vet, did more tests that all came back clear, and went on an exclusion diet (horse) which did nothing. She didn’t want to eat the food she had previously loved so much. Mailing back and forth with my nutritionist, we decided to introduce the ingredients one by one to figure out exactly what was causing it. Beef? Fine. Beef and rice? Also fine. Beef, rice, and veggies? Again, fine. Beef, rice, veggies, and her mineral powder? Banshee refused to eat.
With this knowledge, I went back to my nutritionist who told me that some dogs have sensitive stomachs and can’t handle calcium carbonate very well because it reacts with stomach acid (hydrochloric acid) to create carbon dioxide. Due to a neutralisation of the stomach acid, the stomach begins to create more hydrochloric acid which, along with carbon dioxide, rises back up into the oesophagus. This causes acid reflux. In hindsight, it made a lot of sense that Banshee had been refusing commercial dog food after a while because all of those contained calcium carbonate as a calcium source.
Still, Banshee needed her minerals and vitamins as we didn’t want to cook organ meat, so we got a different mineral mix, or rather two. One containing all the other minerals and vitamins that the last one had – minus the calcium carbonate. And an additional calcium citrate powder. Finally, we were back on track, Banshee was eating normally and she was beginning to become more and more treat-motivated, as well. Another amazing thing that happened was that she stopped being crazy about animal poop. I’m not going to lie, if she had the opportunity to snack on some cat poop without being interrupted, she would still do it. But before this journey, she would go absolutely crazy about even the whiff of poop and there was no stopping her from eating it. Now, she hesitates at least long enough for me to tell her “no” and will leave it 95% of the time. She also dropped the habit of picking up everything on walks (though a certain fondness for sticks remains). Banshee also became less stubborn and impulsive and responded to training much better.
However, there was one more thing. Banshee was too skinny and was supposed to receive meat with a slightly higher fat content than what we had been feeding so far. We bought a slightly fattier beef and started feeding it. Do you want to take a guess what happened? She stopped eating. Additionally, she showed other symptoms, such as stretching after meals, regurgitating after meals, and a lot of lip licking. She was also trying to consume different types of grass and plants, which she seemed crazy about. After mailing back and forth with the nutritionist again, we decided it was best to stick to low-fat meat instead and compensate with healthy oils, which had previously been working. Higher fat content just wasn’t for her. To be on the safe side, we also went to the vet to test her pancreas, which showed no abnormalities at all.
To help improve her digestive system, we also started feeding two supplements (humic acids and live lactic bacteria). Her home-cooked meals in combination with these supplements have finally ended her recurring diarrhoea spells and Banshee’s poops are perfect now. We went from daily to weekly diarrhoea (while feeding commercial food) to monthly diarrhoea (before this treatment) to an occasional soft poop every couple of months. Banshee is still a Samoyed and she still has a more sensitive than average digestive tract, so this is probably as good as it gets for us. I also can’t recall the last time Banshee had a smelly fart.
Banshee has been on her low-fat, calcium-carbonate-free diet for about a year now. She is loving her meals, which might not seem like a big deal to most dog owners, but as someone who tried almost everything to get their dog to eat, it makes me incredibly happy. She stopped her poop-eating habit almost completely (she now rolls in it, instead), is a lot more treat-motivated, very active, and surprisingly less stubborn than she used to be during her bad eating periods. This kind of diet is more expensive than commercial dog food, it’s a lot more work, but we have finally found something that works for us. Banshee is happy with her home-cooked diet and so am I. Of course, not everything is perfect at all times. This year, we had a little worms infestation, which was treated but caused some longer-lasting digestive troubles. She is being treated for this and hasn’t shown any major symptoms for a while.
One exception that occurred was during her heat cycles. Banshee was intact until March 2024 and during her heat, she would go off her food a little, which is completely normal for a female dog and nothing that I worried about. This hasn’t happened since she was spayed for medical reasons this year. However – and this is pretty much confirmation that the problems we had were nutrition-based – during and sometime after these heat-related picky eating habits, she would display some of her other old habits, namely poop eating and picking up random things on walks.
Life Hack for Picky Eaters: Keep a Food Diary
I have been keeping a food diary for Banshee for a year now to keep track of any abnormalities in her eating and pooping habits, which I recommend to everyone struggling with picky eating or other symptoms. It can really help pinpoint some of the issues and figure out what is causing problems, for instance, if you add new supplements or medications.
I decided to write all of this down because I keep encountering dog owners with similar issues, such as picky eating or poop eating. A hill I will absolutely die on, which the authors of Canine Enrichment for the Real World agree on in their book, is that picky eating is not a normal behaviour for dogs, who are opportunistic scavengers. Often there is more behind it than just pickiness and the symptoms can be incredibly subtle and hard to miss. I can only speak from my personal experience and the experiences shared with me by others, but working with a nutritionist has made a world of difference to us and I recommend it to everyone who has even the slightest doubt about their dog’s food.
For the Germans among my readers: The nutritionist I used is the wonderful Nadja (Schnauze bis Pfote), who helped us through the entire process of figuring out what works best for Banshee. I can absolutely and 100% recommend her work and I’m so, so grateful for her expertise and patience. Thanks to her, my Samoyed is now a happy instead of a picky eater 🙂 She also has a very informative Instagram account.