How do you handle a dog that will not eat during a stay?

The American Animal Hospital Association's 2015 behavior management guidelines list profound changes in eating and drinking among the signs of anxiety and distress, and note that acute stress usually lowers appetite and thirst while chronic stress often raises them. Arrival for a stay is acute stress in that sense: a new building, new people, new smells and a new schedule, all on the same day. A dog that leaves its first dinner is usually showing you the change rather than an illness.

Training adds two twists. A dog working for food through the day may simply eat less from the bowl because part of its ration arrived in sessions, which is why it helps to ask at the consult how much of the daily food the trainer expects to use. The reverse also happens: some dogs ignore a bowl in a quiet suite yet take food readily from a handler's hand on the training floor, where eating comes with company. Which pattern a dog shows is the starting point of the plan.

The instinct to tempt a reluctant eater with something richer can backfire, because a new food muddies the picture: you can no longer tell whether the dog is refusing the food or the place. So the usual order is your dog's own food first, offered somewhere calmer, at its normal time, on a day with fewer demands. Food can also become an activity rather than a meal to face, and a lick mat, $5, or a frozen Kong, $6, from Dogtown's enrichment add-ons is the kind of thing a trainer reaches for. What we try for your dog is agreed at the consult.

Rewards other than food carry the training while appetite recovers. A ball, a short game of tug, the chance to sniff a new corner or a quiet scratch behind the ears all count if your dog values them, and the trainer learns which ones yours does. That is why the consult asks what your dog loves besides food. A dog that will work for a toy keeps learning through a slow-eating day, and one that will not simply gets a gentler day.