Dog with strange relationship to food

Question
My 4 year old Beagle/Pointer/Coonhound mix Riot is in all ways one of the best behaved dogs I have ever come across. I adopted her three years ago. She is currently my only pet.

There is one particular issue I am at a loss to solve. She would rather starve herself than eat on the linoleum kitchen floor. She has always been particular about floors. Hard surfaces she will barely sit on, let alone lie down. She will pace miserably for hours if no "soft" floor is available, to the point of exhaustion. In the past I allowed her to eat her food on a dark rug, but in January we moved to a new, smaller house. Since the day we moved in I have established that she is fed in the same spot in the kitchen. She will barely eat, and the whole time she is on edge, ready to flee (back to the safety of the carpet) a any second. If I stand over her and tap the side of the bowl she might eat a few bites. She looks at me like I am torturing her. She'll be reasonably fine about it for a few weeks at a time, then will regress to not eating again. I've tried denying her any other food or treats. She'll just starve herself.

I refuse to give in on this issue. There is no other place that is appropriate to feed her. She is fed high quality organic food, wet mixed with dry. We live on a farm and she gets plenty of exercise. I simply cannot figure out how to convince her to eat her food.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

Answer
Your intransigent position regarding this is not acceptable.  Your dog has an acquired fear response, a rather solid one, and might possibly have some superstitious behaviors related to it.  It is simply not humane to force a dog to eat, something she MUST DO to survive, while stressed to the maximum.  This is seriously eroding any trust this dog has in you.  Rehabilitating this problem requires calm, patient, loving behavior modification.  There appears to be no need to hire an expert to teach you how to do this.  Buy a small bath mat, cheap enough at any Target or Walmart, and put it down in a room where the floor does not elicit this extreme fear reaction.  This is what a loving pet owner does.