How do your dogs eat?

How do your dogs eat? Mine have set methods:

Charlie will pester me for food, then wolf it down. If not this, then he drop the dry puppy food on the floor, stamps on it, bites it and runs back to his bed to eat it (for each one)

Poppet shoves her face in it - like a pig in a trough. Each morning she get's a scrambled egg, and I have never seen such a funny and messy way of eating food than I have from that little lass.

Amie is quite fussy with her food. She wasn't at first but now it actually takes some coaxing to get her to eat.
We have to take some of the kibbles out of the bowl and put them on the ground, then we have to sort of point at it and get all excited. She will then run over and pounce on the food (similar to what you are describing Sumilidon) and take a few pieces and run off before coming back! Amie is very "pawy" if that is the word, she uses here paws for everything! She puts her paws on our faces when she is sleeping, she paws at your hand looking for attention etc!

I think the reason she got fussy was that we were giving her to many treats (it is hard to resist those eyes!) and now she sort of expects treats instead of her proper food. We now give her treats only occasionally and she is starting to eat better.

We are also hoping that when we get a second dog it might have a positive influence on her eating. That is, if her new friend is eating away she might follow suit!

Well that's exactly what we had happening with Charlie. He stopped eating from the bowl, would only eat from hand or the floor, the pawing started to get worse.

He started eating at the same time Poppet did (who is like clockwork) however I don't know if that is because he eats next to her (on seperate sides of xpen wall) or because I have stopped leaving food down all day and now only put down enough for that meal at set times.

Reading the book reccomended to me by Karlin, it's saying I should feed them only through chew toys to start with - so again a bit of a change.

haha.....Amie is the exact same!
Maybe we should change Amie's feeding routine to be honest. Right now we put her food down in the morning and she rarely touches it. She only bothers eating in the evening.

I wonder should we just give her one feed a day in the evening. She is just over 7 months now.

Mine don't have many weird eating quirks, except Casey will lay on the laundry room floor for a full hour before dinner time in anticipation. She literally will not move.

haha....that sounds hilarious! :jump:

Three of mine inhale their food. Seriously, I don't know if they even chew it!!! Oliver, Madison, and Oz do not lift their heads from their bowls until the food is gone (maybe 30 seconds!). Then Oz (16 months old) will take his bowl and walk around the house with it. I don't know what he thinks is going to happen, but he does it every morning. Riley (my SM girl - 6 years old) eats very slowly and is not bothered by the others. They are all fed in the kitchen first thing in the morning, but they all respect each other's space. So far we've had no fights, but I stay in the kitchen with them until Riley is done. Then it is fair game for the bowls and they all lick each other's bowls.

My lot are like hoovers the was they suck thier food up,infact i wish i could get a hoover that works so well continually!by the time the last bowl go down the first ones have finished but they are all good and dont try and thief but i do supervise just incase. Any new foster is fed seperately until it comes up to scratch on the eating front. Some of them dont even know what a bowl is and have to be fed on the floor for a few days but soon get the hang of it. The bigger collies are fed on there own as they eat much slower.

Mine are almost an embarrassment. My Golden sings little songs while I'm getting the food and when I put the bowls out Freckles dances so wildly upright I swear he's going to get whiplash. They scarf the food as if they're starved-poor babies-and the bowls shine when they're done. No self respecting bacteria could survive that polishing . Annie's bowl was even warm yesterday with all her "scrubbing".

Well, with ours if you ask 'u want your dinner?' then Lily (westie) starts to turns in circles, Baileythen chases her around (very cute!) I then tell them into bed which they do brilliantly, sort ot the food (dried burns), put it down and make them stay til i say 'take it' - they are brilliant at this!!

From time to time Bailey (7 months) hasn't fancied her dinner, so for a change i sometimes add warm water so it tastes a bit different for them. They both get fed morning and night.

I'd be careful with hand feeding as i tried this when bailey wouldn;t eat, but she would then only eat out of my hand. I now just put it down, if they want it they will eat it, if they dont then after 10 mins i pick it up, and try again at dinner time. I know feeding times can be frustrating, but persevere with them feedng out of bowls and it will make life sooooo much easier in the end x x

Sparky whines and dances until I put the food down. He won't even stay still long enough to get snooded so it takes forever. Then he inhales.

Lucky has chilled out a lot ... he may claw at the counter where the food is to remind me it is time to eat, but once I prepare his food he is calm and sits quietlly for me to put his snood on (I use this because of the salmon oil I put over their food).

Then Sparky inhales and Lucky eats quickly because Sparky will be after his food if he doesn't. Sparky literally eats in less than a minute so I have to monitor their eating to make sure they don't get competitive over their food. They are fine if I'm right there but they have had a couple ... ummmm ... disagreements, when I thought I could multi-task while they ate.

My two girls are not that fussed, well it depends on what you feed them. Ebony likes her kibble and Rosie is not to keen. Sometimes Rosie doesn’t even eat in the mornings unless I give her a couple of dog biscuits. Both will take the biscuits out of the bowl and take them onto the rug where they eat them. If there is Chicken & Rice on the menu it takes about 30 seconds until it is all gone. Harley my 11 week old pup likes everything. If I put the kibble down he puts his paws into the bowl so the kibble goes everywhere and he eats it of the mat. One funny thing my Rosie does, if I open a new bag of kibble she acts really funny. It’s like she is trying to wash her face in the bowl. She tries to get her whole head into the bow and rubs her face into the food. It only happens if it is a brand new bag of food. How does she know? Really strange.

Sabby

Mika has really changed her eating habits over time. She was a horrible eater when young, but thanks to the advice from this board, she now eats fine.

For a while, she'd take her food into the den a piece or two at a time and eat it in there. Now, she scarfs it down so fast you wouldn't think she was ever fed.

Once I pick up her bowl and head to the closet, she dances, spins and can get pretty vocal. We've had to teach her not to bark. Then she must sit and wait quietly until I'm sitting. My son then tells her to "take it" and we all start eating together. The only difference is that she is finished in about 2 seconds. When she's done, she must go and lie in the den (right beside the kitchen, so she can see us) and wait politely until we are done. Once we're done, my son will call her out and give her a treat like a small piece of fruit. I have no idea why or how we developed this routine. It just kind of happened.

Sometime, if I'm too slow in with the evening meal, she will stand at the closet and whine until I feed her. Sometimes she'll do that for extra evening treats as well.

Jasper had "food trauma" as a young puppy before we got him. The breeder had to force-feed him for 3 days to get him to eat anything at all, and he was a very poor eater for several months after we brought him home. He'd nervously approach his food and yelp continuously as he was eating. We fed him in his crate at first to make him feel more secure. After Dudley died, which left Jas the only dog in the house, he stopped yelping and started eating normally. His food bowl is now in the kitchen. He still likes to bring one piece of food at a time into the living room and eat it at his leisure sometimes, but most of the time he scarfs his food down. When we finally found a food he liked (Merrick's Grammy's Pot Pie), he ate like a champ.

Lori

LorifromGA said:

Jasper had "food trauma" as a young puppy before we got him. The breeder had to force-feed him for 3 days to get him to eat anything at all,

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I have never heard of this. Did the breeder try to wean him too early or something? Usually you introduce solid food long before you wean and puppies are eating well before you ever wean them. In fact, you don't wean them until they are eating well. I can't even imagine how you would force feed a puppy?! This sounds very...weird...for lack of a better word.