Jindo/Lab Mix Weird Eating Behaviours
Hi all. We adopted a second Jindo rescue to give our first one a friendly, confident playmate. Our second girl (Sua) was born in the shelter and doesn't have the same level of trauma as our first (Duksun) but has come with her own challenges.
Since Sua is half lab half Jindo, we expected her to have a strong appetite. She is very food motivated and loves her treats, but I cannot wrap my head around the way she eats. She will literally pick up one kibble at a time, spit it out on the floor, and decide whether she's going to eat it or not before doing the same thing with the next kibble. She will start by walking away from the food bowl to spit it out and eventually she will spit it out right next to the bowl so she ends up making an enormous mess of her food. It takes her so long to go through this ritual that eating takes her 30-40 mins which seems insane. She also rarely finishes her meals so she ends up leaving this kibble all over the floor (and gets protective when Duksun tries to eat it lol).
We tried switching her food to the same protein she was on at the shelter (lamb) since we did wean her on to Duksun's food (chicken) but she showed absolutely zero interest. Since Duksun inhales her food in 1 minute without even chewing, we defaulted to soft silicone slow feeders for both dogs. I tried giving Sua a normal bowl and got the same behaviour. I tried a snuffle mat and she seemed more interested but overall not much changed. I tried putting her food in a kong and she enjoyed licking at it but still seemed very uninterested in the food.
One thing I am worried about it a possible crate association. The shelter told us Sua was crate trained but the first night we got her she had an absolute meltdown in the crate. Not normal barking, it sounded like something was trying to murder her. Since then we've tried crate training her and taking it in very small, slow steps but could never get past the way she ate in the crate. She got all meals in the crate but all she'd do is pick up one kibble at a time, take it far away from the crate, and spit it out. I didn't want to take crate training to the next step until she was consistently eating all meals in the crate, but the way she ate never really improved. Now I'm worried we have instilled some weird eating behaviour. She hasn't been in the crate for a couple of weeks now and gets to eat wherever she wants, but the eating habits seem like they're getting worse not better. She used to at least finish her meal and now she never does.
I'm very torn on how to move forward with this, not to mention the difficulty crate training her, which has been a nightmare because she was chewing on baseboards and wooden stairs when left alone even for 10 mins until we blocked everything off and gave her chew sticks and frozen kongs to keep her prepccupied. Normally I would try stopping all treats but I don't know if it would be a safe decision to stop giving her morning kongs when they help to prevent her from chewing on wood.
I feel so stuck with what to do next. Would love to hear thoughts, opinions, and suggestions. Tia!