I have noticed that when Charlie is eating from his bowl he spreads his legs out almost like a Giraffe, he is quite tall boy so should I worry about the stress on his joints whilst eating in this position :-\ Thanks x
Re: Feeding Position That sounds a bit odd Helen. My Charlie keeps his legs parallel under him, and sort of slopes his shoulders, which looks comfortable. Do you think it's necessary for your Charlie to do this (maybe he has very straight shoulders or something) or it's just a habit he has?
Re: Feeding Position It is odd, but I wonder if it's more to do with his very long legs I wonder if I should buy those raised feeding bowls to keep up straighter :-\ Hattie stands the same as your Charlie
Re: Feeding Position The Purdue study found that raised bowls increase the risk of bloat. Unless more recent research has contradicted this, it might be a good idea to avoid them.
Re: Feeding Position Thanks Pippa, just been looking online at raised feeding bowls and all the claims from the manufacturers is raised bowls reduces bloat as the dog isn't bending over so far and eating at a natural height. Never know if I'm doing the right thing so will leave it as he does seem fine. That's what I love about this forum I can ask sooo many questions
Re: Feeding Position Helen , I bought a raised bowl for Sam , thinking I was doing the right thing , then read that they could be bad for bloat , so I ditched it , its hard to know whats right or wrong at times :
Re: Feeding Position Dogs never had raised bowls in the wild They would eat their prey from the ground so that must be the natural thing to do.
Re: Feeding Position Been pondering this ..... do you think, perhaps, dogs in the wild would lie down to eat?
Re: Feeding Position Barley has a raised bowl but only because he has a bad shoulder and he struggles when his bowl is on the floor and he has to bend down and support himself with his shoulders. I see no harm in rasing his bowl a little bit, maybe just putting a book or two under it so that it is slightly higher for him so his legs are less splayed. Barley has had his raised bowl for almost 2 years now and never had any problems with it, he east slowly anyway and takes his time, never fed before exercise and fed an hour or so after exercise so we try to minismise the risk of bloat as much as possible. If eats from the floor for several days in a row now he is more stiff on his front shoulder, and we have done this several times in trying to get rid of it but we can't, we did run this by our vet and they were happy with it aand said it was the best option for him.
Re: Feeding Position Perhaps we could find the video again of the hounds eating and see what they were doing. I think MMM that you are right that dogs do lie down to eat, but not sure if it is all the time, perhaps they lie down to gnaw the bone part but stand up to to gulp down the flesh?
Re: Feeding Position Having used raised feeding bowls from as far back as I can remember, we have never had any problems with bloat. Our first ever dog was recommended to use a raised bowl because he ate so fast. Nowadays you can get specific bowls to reduce speed eating. We still raise their bowls as I think that it does reduce the strain on joints and neck, all be it for the 10 seconds it takes to eat. There are obviously different heights you can raise a bowl to and ours are at a height where they can eat straight / relaxed legged. We started to make them eat side by side on the same double bowl stand but found out that Ruby is so much smaller than Finlay; she was raising up toget to her bowl, : we have gone back to 2 separate feeding stations. Having read this report, it seems that the vast research was carried out on dogs that had bloat and these were of course in the majority, the breeds more susceptible i.e. large and giant breeds, who by the nature of their size would be using a raised bowl to alleviate joint strain. For the very small percent increase vs. joint effort, neck strain and speed eating, mine will remain, slightly raised.
Re: Feeding Position Hi Michael, There are two studies now that have shown a correlation between bloat and raised bowls. The earlier one I mentioned above. The second of those studies from 2000 included over 1,600 dogs and looked at non-dietary risk factors. The second study is here non-dietary risk factors for GDV Because the 2000 study was confined to large dogs it avoids the risk of a false correlation where little dogs are less likely to be fed from a raised bowl.
Re: Feeding Position Hi Pippa, Thanks for the additional info. As I am not too au fait with reading research would I be right in assuming that out of 1,600 odd dogs only 6% - 98, dogs got bloat and of them 20 & 52% - 50 of those were directly and only attributed to raised bowls. If so, this makes to research a bit clearer, but I still have reservations over the numbers game. Do you know why the research would classify a Collie as a large breed and not a Labrador or is a Labrador not in the bloat risk category? I would still like clarification of how far off the ground is a raised bowl?
Re: Feeding Position Unfortunately, I only have access to the abstract, so can't help very much. But I understood that 98 dogs overall got bloat. Some were large breed, some were giant breed. Out of those, 20% of large breed, and 52% of giant breeds that got GDV were attributed to raised bowls. So we don't have the numbers for those, only the percentages. I don't think we can infer anything about their classification of Labradors and other large dogs. Nor can we infer anything about the risk to those dogs. There are many large and giant breeds not included in the study, not just Labradors. I don't know why they selected the breeds that they did I'm afraid. One aspect I would like to know more about is the type of food these dogs were eating. Other studies have shown an increase bloat risk to dogs fed on kibble, as compared with raw. And dogs eating raw, usually eat off the ground. I'd like to know if there were a significant number of raw fed dogs in this study, and if the dogs fed from raised bowls were more likely to be eating kibble. Probably the number of raw fed dogs was insignificantly small. Or maybe they excluded them. And, as the study was specifically about 'NON-dietary risk factors, presumably they controlled for this. But I'd like to know that they did. That's one of the problems with trying to draw conclusions from abstracts. Having said that, in the absence of further information, if I fed my labradors on kibble (one risk factor) I'd probably stay away from raised bowls (another risk factor) at least until we know more. I'd also be tempted to invest in some slow-feed bowls (with knobbles in) to stop them stuffing the whole lot down in the blink of an eye.(another risk factor)
Re: Feeding Position As my 2 fall into all three of the last catagories you mention, maybe a re-think should be in order :-\
