When I feed Maisie (8 weeks old) she gets very over excited/frantic and I can't get the bowl on the floor before her. So, before I start to attempt to gain some control, anyone have any tips for how to manage this. She also eats so fast that the food is gone in seconds and then she has hiccups!
Re: Feeding I used an anti gobble bowl. It has knobbly bits in it that Riley had to eat around. You can get the same effect with large pebbles apparently(too big to eat!!). From the beginning I asked Riley to sit before his dinner went down, if he moved as I put the bowl down I would pick it up. He was so desperate for his food it didn't take long for him to learn to hold himself back(briefly!!!) ;D
Re: Feeding Puppy hiccups are very common Here are a couple of options: Method 1: Enlist the help of someone else. Arm your helper with some great treats. Put something boring in the dinner bowl, like chopped carrot. Show Maisie that it's only carrot. You hold the bowl while your helper manages Maisie. Your helper asks Maisie to sit and feeds her a constant stream of treats for sitting. When she's sitting lower the bowl to the ground and say a cue word (any word that will come to mean 'you can eat now'). Let her run to the bowl after you say your 'eat now' cue. Next time do it with a few bits of her dinner in the bowl as well. Gradually make the bowl contents more exciting. Method 2: Have the food bowl ready with her dinner in it. Wait for her to sit. You don't need to ask for a sit, just wait for her to do it. As soon as she sits start lowering the bowl towards the ground. As soon as her bottom lifts off the ground lift that bowl up too. Wait for a lowered bottom, then lower the bowl again. This might take some time.....but persevere. Eventually you will be able to get the bowl on the ground while she's still sitting - at that point say a 'go eat' cue and encourage her to get up and eat. (Just read Barbara's post as I go to post this - she describes the same method )
Re: Feeding Are you giving her sufficient food? Sounds like a silly question, but on another forum there was the same problem and it was discovered she wasn't getting quite as much food as she should have, he had misread the instructions Not being critical in anyway, just a suggestion!
Re: Feeding We started off rather enjoying Pongo's antics when it was dinner time, but then figured out we had to calm things down a bit. He has always been quite good at 'sit' and 'stay', so we made him sit and stay three or four yards away from feeding place before putting the bowl down. Only took a couple of days for him to learn that the bowl didn't go on the floor til his bottom was on the ground. So I'm sure that that is your best route - you could combine it with working really hard on the 'sit and stay' command (for treats) in between meal times?
Re: Feeding I use sit and wait. It only took a few days for her to learn this. I use either an anti gulp bowl or a kong wobbler which makes her work for her food and takes longer to get all the food out so slows down the eating. Good luck
Re: Feeding Spreading the food out on a flat tray works really well to slow these frantic gobblers down. One of mine was so frantic for food as a pup she would regularly gobble-vomit-gobble the vomit and feeding from a flat tray has solved the problem.
Re: Feeding Should have added.... Pongo also bolts all his food in 30 seconds then hiccups for ages; but the hiccups don't seem to bother him so I've not worried about them.
Re: Feeding Great comments, thanks everyone. Stacia, not taken as a criticism at all ! Actually, I have been looking at Maisie today and wondering if she had lost a little wait since arriving. I'm following the amount the breeder told me to start off with, but have slightly increased the amount today, plus training treats. It's really difficult to work out the right amount from the guidelines on the packet.
Re: Feeding [quote author=Naya link=topic=5676.msg72208#msg72208 date=1398873118] I use sit and wait. It only took a few days for her to learn this. I use either an anti gulp bowl or a kong wobbler which makes her work for her food and takes longer to get all the food out so slows down the eating. Good luck [/quote] Same here - Tatze's morning meal was in a Kong wobbler 'till she was about 16 weeks old. She was a bit slower to eat in the evening - but I used to spread it across the floor to stop her hoovering it up. She eats sensibly now (12 months old)
Re: Feeding . It's really difficult to work out the right amount from the guidelines on the packet. It certainly is. We don't want to over feed and create a fat unhealthy dog, but there are all those growing bones and developing organs that need nourishment, not to mention the huge amount of energy a puppy expends. It is a massive responsibility and the food manufacturers don't help by giving instructions about feeding the eventual size of an adult dog. How on earth do you know. I plumped for the middle of the range and kept an eye on her ready to adjust if necessary. Don't worry, it will all become clear in a couple of days.
Re: Feeding Can't add much to the good advice you've had here already but a cheap alternative to an anti gulp bowl is to put one (or two depending on the size) tennis ball in the food bowl on top of the food.
Re: Feeding I always did the same as Tina and fed middle of the range amount and used that as my base line to calculate training treats from( which made it very easy for me as there was a period when Dexter could only have his kibble due to his upset tum) I'm the biggest worry wart in the world with him being my first dog but I've found that I can manage Dexters weight really easy just by looking at him and 'judging 'an adjustment...I'm lucky though,he's not prone to putting weight on and if anything I could probably ( and am ! ;D) criticized for keeping him on the too side of slim : huh! I think he's perfect! ;D As a matter of interest coming from this thread Debs ,I timed Dexter this morning eating his 150g of kibble ,from his head going in to coming out of the bowl...... 39.44 seconds!i actually thought it would be quicker! I'll feed him from a tray tonight and see what time he can do! ;D my boy doesn't do anything slowly though! X
Re: Feeding You could just not use a bowl. Unlike Dex, Charlie piles on weight at the sniff of kibble, so everything is measured out. If I don't do this, he gets heavier, and it's hard to shift. So food is rationed here - but it's hard cash for Charlie. So I think sticking it in a bowl is a real waste. Food is find it games, kong wobblers, frozen kongs, training currency, pass the parcel games, find food in the trixie ball bag, trick teaching....I would rather scatter it across the garden and let him search out the whole lot than put it in a bowl.
Re: Feeding I'm a member of the "make them work for it brigade" too. I carefully weigh out next days food supply just before I put her to bed as part of her routine. Her training treats come out of it as do her Kongs. Because of her age (7months) Molly is currently on her highest intake of food, which is just 350g of kibble per day. Looking at it is is easy to see how a small handful extra per day wouldn't look like much but would soon mount up on the dog's body. When we took her for her post OP check up a fat, old, Yellow lab waddled into the waiting. We thought the poor old thing as on it's last legs. It stood there panting with the effort and it's nose seemed to stick out from a barrel of lard. When I asked how old it was the answer was 6 years! It should have been in the prime of an an energetic life. Dog's don't have much intellectual capacity, they cannot enjoy reading a book etc, letting them (no,sorry forcing them) to get fat is cruel.
Re: Feeding [quote author=Mollly link=topic=5676.msg72420#msg72420 date=1398926142] When we took her for her post OP check up a fat, old, Yellow lab waddled into the waiting. We thought the poor old thing as on it's last legs. It stood there panting with the effort and it's nose seemed to stick out from a barrel of lard. When I asked how old it was the answer was 6 years! It should have been in the prime of an an energetic life. Dog's don't have much intellectual capacity, they cannot enjoy reading a book etc, letting them (no,sorry forcing them) to get fat is cruel. [/quote] Oh Tina,I hear you,it ages them terribly,I've been shocked and saddened by some of the ages of labs that have been revealed to me....some owners know it but don't seem to want to do anything about it others turn it round on me ( even though I've never been rude about it I don't think)and ask why Dex is so 'skinny' ???
Re: Feeding [quote author=JulieT link=topic=5676.msg72407#msg72407 date=1398924601] So food is rationed here - but it's hard cash for Charlie. So I think sticking it in a bowl is a real waste. Food is find it games, kong wobblers, frozen kongs, training currency, pass the parcel games, find food in the trixie ball bag, trick teaching....I would rather scatter it across the garden and let him search out the whole lot than put it in a bowl. [/quote] Hard cash for my Charlie too, he has to work for about 80% of his daily food and the remainder is put in his tray to eat with Hattie in the evening
Re: Feeding It can be really difficult to get the feeding amounts right. My two eat the same food and treats, and have exactly the same exercise, training, etc and both weigh 25kg but Tarkie gets 440g daily and greedy Lochan gets 250g daily to keep them right. We had a 3yo lab bitch in the surgery the other day that weighed in at 56kg. I got my two out of the office to show the owners what normal looked like and pointed out that the two of mine together weighed less than this poor dog.....
