Maggie the Emo Basset-Beagle

I have doggie drama. This shouldn't surprise me, Maggie's always been so emo I feel I should tart her up in a black corset and blood-red lipstick. But this drama is dinner-specific and I've never had a dog that didn't want to eat before.

Because she loves the laser pointer so much, for a while when she refused to eat, I could lead her to her dish with the red dot... and turn it off when it got into a deep nook, and she'd eat her food to try and find out where the dot was hiding. Now she refuses to eat at all unless someone shines the dot on her food. Even if she's hungry.

It's like those army dudes who have to hike behind enemy lines to find secret military thingies and shine a laser on them so the bombers can find them. In order to make Maggie eat, someone must paint the target! And even then it only works a little bit now. Sometimes she goes over to the food, licks where the dot is, finds she does not have the dot in her mouth as she wants, and refuses to eat anything else.

She'll eat people food, which we don't want to give her because... doggie food is better for her!

She loves pretzels.

She can eat her weight in banana chips...

And when she's outside, if there is cat poo anywhere in the vicinity, she tries to eat that!

She eats dirt. She eats sticks. She gets sick... which exacerbates the no-dog-food-eating situation. A dog can't live on pretzels, no matter how adorable it is to watch her eat them(she holds them daintily between her paws and bites off the loopy bit, then turns the pretzel and bites off the second loopy bit...), but when she refuses to eat anything for a day(no matter how many different foods we tempt her with), someone is gonna give in and share their dinner.

If anyone knows a way to trick a finicky dog into eating actual doggie food, please share!