Diet of an Elderly Dog - Should I be worried?

Can anyone give me advice on the diet of elderly dogs and how worried should I be with the change in pattern of mine. My dog Luke has had a dodgy stomach for years and gets periods of bad diahrrea and has been eating fresh meat with rice and pasta which seems to have worked relatively ok until recently.

Increasingly though over the last few weeks he is eating less food which I have put down to old age as he is now 13 1/2 but what is worrying me is that I can only really get him to eat "junk" food. An example of what he has eaten today is

Lunch -¼ quiche,2 small pork pies, ½ spirio (dog chew), 4 small bits of pizza

Tea - 10 slices of thin ham,2 tiny squares of beef

Supper -¼ large pok pie, ¾ veggi burger with the roll.

Most of the food is things I have eaten throughout the day. I know the diet is unhealthy but i'm at a loss on how to get him to eat anything else. If I put his normal food there he refuses to eat it no matter how long I don't feed him for. I put his food down for him today and he just walked away.

He's recently been put on tablets for a heart murmour he has had for years , but has got worse and Rimadyl.. He also takes vitamins from the vets.

My concern is should I be worried about the food I can get him to eat at his age, if so any ideas how to change his habits without starving him? He is still asking to go for walks etc.

I used to feed my elderly X breed Chicken minced up with compete food for senior dogs when she was 15 I used to feed her small meals & gave her fish, scrambled eggs(just the eggs lightly cooked without milk) etc if she had an off day. Older dogs need lower protein if memory serves me right.

Have a look at this link re Rimadyl I would have him checked out at the vets

Thanks I never throught of trying eggs and fish. Luke is due back at the vets on Thursday and I will discuss the Rimadyl then as a few people have posted me messages about its dangers.

Hi Alison, The food you are feeding is very high in salt and will not help your dogs heart condition . My dog Amy is nearly 15 and has a serious heart murmur too, I make sure she has as little salt as possible in her diet, she also has trouble eating because of a broken tooth (the vet can't do anything because of her heart) and saliva gland problem so I now feed her fresh easily digested cooked food and no dog food at all and giver her three small meals from the following..
porridge
brown rice
scrambled egg
chopped steamed veg
tinned sardines in oil (with the oil drained off)
cod or coley (frozen in little squares from the supermaket)
cooked chicken/other meat
wholemeal pasta
rice biscuits (with no salt/round from the supermarket or health food shop)

Have been out shopping today for fish and stocked up on eggs, i'll try him with that tomorrow. I have just managed to get him to eat two small bowls of casserole and a small amount of pasta for tea. I brought the food into the room where I was having my tea and pretended to eat it, which managed to do the trick.

Fingers crossed for tomorrow's meal.

If you want to go the fish route, take a look in Pets at Home in their freezer, they do a fantastic frozen white fish block for 99p! My dogs love it, and of course, there's no bones to worry about, there's no additives whatsoever in it, it's just pure white fish minced up, no skin either. Check the packs, coz they do a brown one too which has the skin minced in with it. You just chuck it in the microwave for 3 mins. then mash it around, then put it back for a further 5 mins. I mix mine with mashed potato and it's woofed down

Luke has just asked for some food and i've given him two scrambled eggs, which he eat picking up every bit. Typical how you can miss the most obvious solutions.

Thanks for your suggestions