Everything we tried with Jackie to ensure that his metabolism was well supported by the quality of food we were offering him seemed to be failing. His twin, Jillie, eating the very same high-quality food is thriving. She has gained the appropriate weight for her breed, size and age, while her brother's weight remains precarious. She is stout and free from any health symptoms, and he, by contrast, is delicate, with no spare fat on his frame, his spine and ribs prominent, and he has been susceptible to all manner of episodic health incidents throughout his young life.

He's the happiest of little dogs, his personality rambunctious and joyful and loving. Her character is a pale reflection of his, though she certainly has her moments. Both of these puppies love galloping about with one another, indulging in rough play and enjoy constant surges of frenetic activity. And both of them are addicted to eating, while only one doesn't seem to thrive on what he's eating.

Mind, they're so absorbed in consuming things that they're continually browsing when we're out of doors. Which means that every little twig, dessicated leaf, or other type of detritus we pass attracts them. This is most acute during the winter months when such detritus stands out visually on the covering of snow. And occasionally that results in a bit of a catastrophe when they munch on something that has fungal growth attached to it. We've thought about equipping them with muzzle halters to stop this continual browsing, but just cannot bring ourselves to enforcing our 'No!' policy to that extent.

As much as Jackie loves food and consuming it ravenously, there were occasional mornings when he spurned all food, just walked away from it, disinterested and obviously feeling unwell. Usually by mid-afternoon he would have surmounted his disinclination to eat, returning to normal, and by the time his evening mealtime rolled around, he'd be famished and more than ready to eat again.

The veterinarian found nothing organically wrong with him, just that he was definitely underweight, but intrinsically healthy. He advised that we consider giving him a specialized kibble produced by Royal Canin, meant for dogs who appear to have a gut problem in absorbing nutrients. He sent us home with a small gratis bag of it, to try it out, but we have a dislike and distrust of the brand, and continued to feed them both the locally-sourced-ingredients produced by a Calgary dog food processor of high quality.

Jackie

And for whatever reason, Jackie's episodes of refusing food accelerated from once-weekly to daily. In desperation, we finally decided to try the gastro high-energy food and it does appear to have made a big difference. He tolerates it well and aside from two random episodes of brief food refusal in the morning, he hasn't returned to exhibiting symptoms of gastric distress. We hope this will be the answer to his feeding problem, though it's not apparent to us yet that he has gained any weight under this new regimen.

We had problems almost similar with our little toy poodle Riley when he was a puppy, and we're hoping that Jackie will somehow manage to outgrow this problem.