# Always "hungry?"



## Paws&Tails (Sep 3, 2010)

Spike currently eats 3-4% of his body weight a day. He's at his ideal weight, which is 22 pounds. Not too fat, but not too thin. But he is _ALWAYS_ scrounging for food, getting into trash cans and begging for food. Why in the world does he do this?? Could it possibly be a medical reason??

The 3 dogs previous prior to him didn't do this at all. The first dog we ever had begged for food sometimes, and did get into trash cans sometimes but he certainly didn't scrounge around like Spike does, or beg or get into trash cans like Spike does. The other two neither scrounged nor begged for food and never got into trash cans.


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## DaneMama (Jun 27, 2008)

Have you had him examined by a veterinarian? Have you had blood work done recently? Is he acting normally otherwise?

To be honest, he sounds like a normal raw fed dog to me. He's constantly searching for more of that awesome raw food that you give him. Most of my dogs beg, scrounge and get into the trash (when we are bad and leave it out). All of them are in perfect health and always have been. Its true some dogs beg more than others, but I think since dogs LOVE raw foods more than they do kibble it makes their drive to find food all that more strong. I wouldn't worry about it too much, just be extra diligent about putting things away so he cannot get into something he shouldn't


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## luvMyBRT (Mar 8, 2010)

Almost every dog I have had has been very food driven (except for one stubborn Standard Poodle). Now that my dogs are raw fed it seems they are even more into food then before. I too think that your dog sounds totally normal....just loves food. I'll tell ya one thing....having a food driven dog makes training easy! LOL!


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## SamWu1 (Oct 15, 2010)

I have never met an otherwise healthy dog that didn't always "acted" hungry. I think it has something to do with their instincts to always gorge when food is available. My 30lbs. dog was accidentally fed 4lbs. of rmbs' in one sitting by a pet sitter and guess what, he still begged for more.


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## Northwoods10 (Nov 22, 2010)

Our dogs are the same...mostly Remi. He acts as if he's starving, when really I think he's just searching for more goodies because he loves them so much! 

If you are worried that he's not getting enough to eat, maybe try adding an ounce or two per meal and see if that helps?


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## Paws&Tails (Sep 3, 2010)

I could try upping him to 4% of his body weight, but he's in perfect condition right now. I wonder if maybe breaking it into smaller, more frequent meals would help some?

I just wanted to make sure it wasn't out of the ordinary. Thanks you guys!



DaneMama said:


> Have you had him examined by a veterinarian? Have you had blood work done recently? Is he acting normally otherwise?
> 
> To be honest, he sounds like a normal raw fed dog to me. He's constantly searching for more of that awesome raw food that you give him. Most of my dogs beg, scrounge and get into the trash (when we are bad and leave it out). All of them are in perfect health and always have been. Its true some dogs beg more than others, but I think since dogs LOVE raw foods more than they do kibble it makes their drive to find food all that more strong. I wouldn't worry about it too much, just be extra diligent about putting things away so he cannot get into something he shouldn't


He was examined in January. No blood work though. Yep, he's acting perfectly normal.


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## DaneMama (Jun 27, 2008)

You can definitely feed smaller more frequent meals to see if it helps. I wouldn't suggest increasing his food because I don't think it'll help and you don't want him to get overweight. He may be acting hungry but if all else is normal and healthy you've got nothing more than a typical chow hound on your hands!


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## sassymaxmom (Dec 7, 2008)

Max really isn't the best example as he has never been a food seeker like Sassy was but anyway yesterday he got an enormous meal, about 300% his usual. It is about 5 minutes before his usual meal time right now and he isn't bugging me for dinner. Generally he has been staring at me for about an hour or so at this point. You could try feeding big/small to see if getting really and truly FULL helps any. Getting good and full helped with bone eating too. He now considers whether he really needs to eat all the bone, a good thing when things like pork neck and beef ribs are fed.

I put him on a single daily meal because his 10 ounces a day split in two was ridiculous. He would get a chicken bit plus organ and a couple ounces of meat for the other meal. No way that is as satisfying as all of it in one meal.

Now it is the time I usually give up and feed him and he is snoozing in his bed. I will see if I can get away with no meal today.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>time passed<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Nope, he took a 2 hour snooze on my lap and then sprung into full annoy huMom until I got up and fed him. He got a very small meal though!


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## eternalstudent (Jul 22, 2010)

Now I might be wrong on this but:
My limited understanding of the way us humans changed the dogs was also to include the drive to constantly find food, one problem to overcome is that if your dog is full of food why would they want to keep chasing it?
Answer was to breed in the constantly hungry trait. In some cases (I remember this back in the 80-90's with labs and retrievers) they will eat themselves to a ruptured stomach if they could.
I went to once a day feeding to try and give my dog at least some hunger satisfaction during the day, don't know if it works but she now enjoys a good snooze after eating which I take to indicate satisfaction


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