Late this morning, I headed out for a biweekly Taste of Ocala committee meeting. The big event is two months away and we’ve secured all of the participating restaurants. Now it’s time to sell some tickets and find more event sponsors!
Lunch
After my meeting, I headed home for lunch.
I was in a bit of a hurry, so I quickly scrambled some eggs with spinach and leftover Andouille sausage from last night’s dinner. I also ate a pear on the side.
Then it was off to the Artisinal Dish! I had a meeting with a potential client to discuss a possible ongoing freelance project and arrived a little early. While I waited, I bought an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie and a bottle of Ayala’s lemongrass mint vanilla herbal water.
I adore that water. The flavor profile is so unique and it is incredibly refreshing.
Our meeting was short and sweet and I was in and out in less than an hour. The Artisinal Dish is located right across the street from a store that sells Sadie’s dog food, so I popped in and bought a jumbo bag.
Last week a few of you asked what food we feed Sadie, so I snapped a picture today.
We feed her Orijen dog food. We actually still buy puppy food because Sadie is a scrawny little girl and our vet in Orlando recommended keeping her on puppy food to help keep weight on her. (Vizslas as a breed are lean dogs.) I did a bunch of research on different kinds of dog food before we got Sadie and she’s a picky eater, so it took us a few trials before we found a quality dog food that she seemed to enjoy. Now we’re all about Origen!
Question of the Afternoon
- Pet owners: Is your pet a big eater?
We’ve always said that Sadie is a “feast or famine” eater. She has access to her food 24 hours a day and will eat a ton some days and then only nibble a bit the next day. She’s goofy.
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I don’t have a dog but have cats, who eat SO much but they are the tiniest little things. It’s odd, maybe it’s because they’re outdoor. The event sounds like it will be a ton of fun! I’m sure you’ll be able to find lots more event sponsors!
Okay, that herbal water sounds super interesting, but totally tasty!
I own two bulldogs – enough said. We go through food like no one’s business.
LOL! my sister’s boyfriend is a lab and is a big eater, too. kona will eat ANYTHING. sadie so picky. she doesn’t even like traditional dog treats like milkbones unless they’re meat based.
*his dog is a lab. he isn’t. my sister is not dating a dog. 🙂
LOL 🙂
Gotta love those hilarious typos! 🙂
Katie, I have a bulldog too!! She eats like she’s never seen food before!If we let her free-feed, we’d have a 200 lbs puppy on our hands in about two days.
Bulldog owner here as well!!! She gets one cup 2x a day and that’s it! Haha she also gets cottage cheese mixed in with her kibble…spoiled.
My dog is the same way! He is such a sleepy head in the morning and pretty much refuses to eat within a few hours of waking up! Some days he wolfs down his dinner, other days he doesn’t eat much of anything, a few bites here or there if I’m lucky.
2 Labs=2 dogs who live to eat!
My lab will eat herself into a coma if you let her! She’ll eat ANYTHING too, I don’t think she’s met a people food or treat that she hasn’t liked!
My beagle, on the other hand, is just like Sadie. Some days she barely eats and other days she acts like we never feed her!
My lab mix is the same, he could eat all day! My family had a beagle and she was the same way. Unlike Jen’s, our beagle would eat all food in sight and even got to the food container a few times, eating it all!
Besides our lab mix, my husband & I have the sweetest husky mix and she’s just like Sadie. She will eat like there won’t be any food tomorrow and other day’s she will take a pass. Gotta love ’em!
My shih tzu, Charlee, is the pickiest eater ever! I have tried tons of different brands. Lately, she has enjoyed fresh pets. She too has access 24/7 but there are days she won’t even eat. It’s frustrating because I can hear her belly growl but she won’t eat. So strange!!
I have a shih tzu as well, Murphy, and he’s the exact same way. He’ll easily go 2 days at a time without eating, belly growling and all. It’s like they have their own shih tzu diet plan!
Haha it drives me nuts. I’ve also noticed that when I place her bowl out in the living room with us she will eat her food. It’s like she needs an audience as well!! I love her 🙂
Mmm that oatmeal chocolate chip cookie looks so yummy! Now I’m craving cookies!
Both of our labs are huge eaters! If we gave them free reign with their food, they’d be obese. I’m pretty sure their favorite parts of the day are breakfast and dinner. 😉
We feed out kitty the same stuff. She loves it and we love that there is no junk in it. She goes in spurts, some days eats tons other days not so much.
My dog Jack (a 2 yr old black lab) is the same way. If we are at my parent’s house where there are other dogs, he could skip his meals all weekend and be fine. Sometimes he just is busy playing all day and gets to his food when he feels like it. Other times though, he gobbles all his food in like 5 seconds. Weird!
Feast or famine! Love that. Now we know what to call Laverne’s eating habits. She is good about eating breakfast every morning but dinner is hit or miss. If we are out for dinner then chances are she won’t eat but if we eating at home then she will eat when we’re eating. Go figure. I guess she likes the company.
My dog could eat all day long! He also eats sooo fast that I have to put a metal ball in his food to slow him down. Crazy!
My dog is the same way. We leave food is bowl 24/7. Some days we have to fill it a couple of times, and other days he barely eats any of it. He has somewhat of a sensitive stomach, so once we found a food that worked, we stayed with it!
Silly Sadie! My dog Leo, is a 3 year old Shetland Sheepdog (Sheltie) and he’s definitely the same way, he has access to food constantly because he’s just a grazer!
As a puppy Leo had a corn allergy, which has lessened over time but I still don’t like to feed him anything with corn as a major ingredient in it (which with most dog foods and treats is like everything). Our brand is Blue Buffalo. He loves it and it has absolutely no corn. 🙂
Our dog Lando loves to eat, but we only feed him twice daily. Once in the morning and once in the evening. He loves his dog food and will try to sneak cat food too. He likes human food if he can sneak a bite (he stole a sandwich right out of my hand once) but doesn’t care for veggies like snap peas or carrots if given to him. He LOVES treats though. He’ll vacuum those right up.
I also got 3 cats that are eating us out of house and home. 2 of them are long and lean, one very muscular. The third…. she’s round, heavy, with a small head that lives for food.
There is another Lando out there?! Our 4 year old adopted English Setter shares the same name, and apparently the same appetite for life. He eats his food in 30 seconds, two cups twice daily, and just the other day stole my pepperoni bread right of the kitchen table. I caught him eating it in the living room.
LOL! Yes! Our Lando is an Aussie Shepherd. He has his weird food moments though. A couple times I had to feed him by hand when he was a pup because he was scared of his food bowl! Now he eats just fine, but always checks his dish as if more food would magically appear 🙂 We feed him Eukanuba.
when our gsp was just a few months old, our vet suggested giving him a “bottomless bowl” so he could teach himself how much to eat. we tried it out but he ate SO MUCH until he had a sweet little pregnant belly and looked like a groggy mess. we now measure his food twice a day, but he still eats it as fast as possible, always hoping to finish first so he can sneak some of his slower-eating brothers food too!
this made me say “awwwww” out loud. i LOVE german shorthaired pointers – ryan and i both want one in the future. 🙂
Our dog has eating anxiety and I have to sit with her before she’ll eat! She is crazy. We love her anyways 🙂
My dog could eat the entire bag of food we buy in one sitting! He acts like he is always hungry and it makes me sad because I always want to feed him more but we have to measure his food and be careful because he is a French Bulldog that has to maintain a proper weight.
I have a husky and a lab. The lab will eat her bowl and the husky’s food if given the chance. I try to watch what she eats because she is starting to get the barrel belly. Our husky is a very different eater and will hoard her food. She is very picky about what she eats and she will take a mouthful and hide it in places to eat later.
my dog is a weird eater, he sometimes goes to town on his breakfast other times wont touch it until like 4pm and then still wants dinner at 6. Or he isn’t interested at all, but he is without fail always interested in people food and is right at my feet when I prep dinner!
Ha my dog is the same! I halfway think he waits to eat his own food to see how much people food he can trick us into giving him during dinner prep.
My Vizsla, Libby, is teeny as well and such a picky eater!! I used to spoon feed her as a pup to try and get her to eat. [I’m sad to admit that fact, but it’s true] I no longer do that, but she still isn’t interested in food much..she could take it or leave it, really. My German Shorthaired Pointer LIVES for food. So funny how they can be so different. 🙂
you have a vizsla AND a gsp!? two fabulously crazy dogs! i hope to be a gsp owner one day. they’re awesome!
One of my parent’s dogs is a gsp, wirehaired. They are amazing dogs! He is almost 12 years old with the energy of a 4 year old 🙂
I love seeing the wirehaired GSP’s, its amazing how different they look. 🙂 Julie- I agree, GSP’s are awesome! We rescued ours about 2 months ago. He’s 5 and the sweetest boy you’ll ever meet. He was an owner surrender and likely abused. So sad…BUT, he gets lots of love now. 🙂
My brither’s golden retriever is the same, sometimes she’ll scarf down her food and sometimes she won’t touch it! Very different from one of my dogs growing up, we had a chocolate lab who would have eaten herself to death if he could!
Our dog, Nola, eats like it is her job. I honestly don’t know how she stays so lean because she eats all her food at our place and then we head to my parent’s house, they have two dogs, and she eats all their food as well. And then barks for more. It is out of control!
Our English Setter, Lando, is feast, always. He nearly pees himself he’s so excited for meal times you would think that we starve him! We only feed him Blue Buffalo dog food. When we adopted him he was infested with fleas and let with very itchy, dry and damaged skin. Now almost 3 months later, his skin starting to heal and his coat is getting so shiny!
My Golden is a BIG eater! I have him on 3 cups a day of Blue . Lets just say he is waiting in his crate for his food promptly at 5:30 and at 4pm! He also devours the bowl in 30 seconds or less!
Niko eats Core Wellness! She loves it, but it’s kinda pricey. Quality stuff, though. She gets mix of wet and dry every day 🙂
Our dog is “feast or famine” too, except we call it a hunger strike when he doesn’t eat much. Some days he can’t get enough and some days he just doesn’t touch his food. He’s a jack russell mix so he’s pretty high energy. Maybe he’s just too busy bouncing around to stop and eat. I don’t know.
It always depended on the type of dog. Our Bichon was super picky, and had to be bribed to eat at dinner time. Our labs and mutts were always voracious eaters, and the wheaten terrier was somewhere in the middle 🙂
This post made me feel better! My dog is like Sadie – feast or famine. And it made me nervous because my previous pups were all big eaters! Some days my guy needs three bowls, sometimes he’ll swallow one or two nibbles, and then look mournfully at our plates. Once, when he left him with my parents for three days, he wouldn’t eat for 48 hours! He was so pissed at us for leaving him behind. 🙂
Annie, my beagle, will eat anything (non-food items included)! She seemed to never get full and would literally drag her food bowl across the house demanding more. After a ton of research, I started feeding her Wellness Core. It’s an awesome grain-free food with lots of protein. She loves it and it fills her up!
Our italian mastiff, King, eats about 3+ cups a day, plus some added “enticers”(i.e. chicken, juices from what I cook, etc. I created a spoiled dog, I know.). But he eats 90% of his food at night. I think he likes to eat with us. 🙂
Our Plott Hound eats like there is no tomorrow and he’s still lean. 80 pounds of lean!
Our bulldog, Tortuga, eats every meal like she’s never seen food in her life. You’d think we never feed her based on the way she scarfs down breakfast and dinner. We feed her a gluten/grain-free, soy-free, dairy-free, and chicken-free diet because of all the allergies bulldogs are prone to, but luckily there are plenty of products on the market to fill that niche! It is hard at the park or walking in the neighborhood when we have to turn down treats because we don’t know what’s in them, and we have to literally drag her away.
That’s the same food that we feed my pup 🙂 Our girl is definitely a picky eater, and even though she has access to food 24/7, she’ll usually just grab a mouthful here and there throughout the course of the day rather than eat everything all at once. Her appetite is never missing when it comes to human food though 🙂
My dog wants to eat everyone’s food except hers for the most part. We feed her when we get home from work, but she usually eats her dinner after we are done eating and she doesn’t think she’s going to get anything from us, hehe.
We have an adorable lab/springier/basset mix (looks like a lab/springier with about 5 inch legs!) Anyways, she would eat forever if we let her. She knows where all the food dishes are in our friends and families houses! We feed her Canidae dog food that we get from our vet and she loves it!
Our Vizsla is the exact same way! Totally depends on the day and her mood!
Both of our English bulldogs, with just chow down at least once a day! they are little piggies! hehe 🙂
We feed our wiener dog puppy food still too, even though he’s 8 years old. He also has access to his food 24/7, but he’s just like Sadie- feast or famine. He can go a day without eating, but then he will eat 4 bowls of food in one day… He’s a silly little guy! However, if you’re offering people food, he will eat until he explodes.
We just adopted a Husky/Shepherd mix and are also feeding him Orijen! It can be a little tricky to find but luckily we just moved and our new pet store carries it. Jake has the opposite problem as Sadie and came to us a little overweight, but a few times since we adopted him he wanted nothing to do with his food — it’s as if he knew he needed to lose a few! That’s changed since he started running with me…Now he can’t get enough 🙂
My little Shih Tzu, Louie, is finally getting the hang of eating. We literally had to feed him one kibble at a time (by HAND) when we first brought him home, just to get some food in him. He would not eat out of the bowl! Then we tried putting it on the floor, which worked a little better, but that was gross. So finally we settled on a little saucer plate. Now he eats out of that all by himself. When I bought him they scared me to death with the hypoglycemia thing, so I was always so worried he wasn’t eating enough. Nice to be done with all of that! New problem, chewing on the baseboards! 😉
My german shepard/husky mix Athena used to just graze and care less about her food until we got Juno our little lab (notorious for eating anything in sight-and she definitely lives up to the breed) then Athena HAD to gaurd her food with her life so now she eats as fast as Juno does.
Roo, my vizsla, is always ready to eat! I give her Royal Canin and she LOVES it! I had to buy one of those special bowls that slows her down because she was scarfing too fast!
My two cats eat Orijen!!! So glad you are on the Orijen/Ancana bandwagon. All the chicken and eggs are grown in my area. When I drive past a farm I always wonder if they are chickens/eggs bound for Orijen. I like that they are independent meaning that they run thier own plant instead of outsourcing. It keeps us and our pets safe from mass recalls and contamination. They also pick the best ingredients (Aka BC Fraser Valley Chicken and Eggs). We did a lot of research on food before picking Orijen and our cats love it. We joke that they get a better variety of food in Orijen than we do. They have gotten so picky since we switched them to it and refuse to eat anything but. They also have the most soft and shiny coats now. One day I may have to make Trouble into a scarf or mittens (I joke, maybe).
Weird. Just checked and online it says the chicken/egg is Alberta sourced. Pretty sure at least when we started buying Orijen a few years ago it was from the Fraser Valley. That’s ok though, means chickens aren’t shipped so far.
My girls are both mutts and they munch sporadically during the day. I go through a large bag like you bought about every 3 weeks for two.
We rescued a GSP/Lab mix in the Fall and you would think each time I fed her that I haven’t fed her in DAYS! She eats her food so fast, I had to get her one of those slow-feeding bowls. If I left her food out, she would surely eat herself into a food coma.
Lots of food in this post!!! 🙂 We have to stay around for Dakota to eat. Otherwise she will completely ignore her dog food bowl. She’s a thin little boxer as it is, so it’s rather worrisome when she does this
That cookie looks super good!!!
Our meagle, Bailey, is a food disposal! He just loves fruits (apples and oranges) and gets into everything! If we ever happen to have a bag hanging off the counter, he’ll jump at it until he gets it. He’s eaten a can of wasabi almonds (no idea how he got it open) and a deep dish pizza before! We’ve even come home to seeing wrappers on the floor which he picked from the trash can and licked clean, and also a bag of flaxseed all over the carpet because he decided he wanted some extra fiber.. Whatta rascal!
My dog isn’t a big eater! Sometimes it worries me, but he’s not underweight so I shouldn’t be so overprotected!
Hi Julie!
I am SO SO glad that you were able to bring in Sadie when you did! I am a new puppy owner and I too find myself WAY overprotective. I brought Ruby in the other week just because I thought I saw a balding spot on her back (if you watch Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, you’ll know why, one of the dogs has alopecia!). Anyways our very sweet vet actually laughed (in a kind, non-pedantic way) and told me it was just a “cow lick”! I thought to myself that I’d never overreact, but your post made me think that I’d rather be safe than sorry!
Rubix Cube (Ruby) is one weiiiiird eater!!! She loves kibble…any kind! But she won’t even touch a doggie treat. We’ve tried them all. Her favorite foods include, but are not limited to: chicken, carrots, bananas, cucumbers, wine (?!…she will STEAL sips from my glass! drives me crazy that I cant stop it!!), spinach, organic goldfish, and any and ALL underwear…well, preferable if DIRTY! Oh…..and poop. 🙁
Take care & have a great rest of the week! Also good luck with your new personal training adventure!
Two dogs seven year old lab that would eat anything, and A twelve year old rot/shepard mix that is very picky, there are even some treats she will spit back out.