No Dog Bowl for Puppy
In the wild dogs spend almost all their time hunting or eating food. At meal time for our puppy, he bounces around getting excited and then wolfs down dinner in seconds flat. We are robbing him of a major part of his natural life, the searching for food. We can not send our puppy out the door and tell him to go and hunt for his dinner so we need to find a suitable, substitute activity. If we do not find such an activity the puppy will have all that time to fill and he will find ways to occupy his time, not necessarily how we would want him to spend his time. He will fill the gap with chewing, barking, playing or just roaming round looking for something to do and get in to mischief and generally start causing problems.
So, do not go down the line of feeding your puppy from a bowl, a different method is needed. A method that will make him work for his food. Perhaps it will not take all day but he will spend quite some time at the activity. The way I suggest is to use chew toys which would be stuffed with the puppy food. Chew toys should be almost indestructible, usually made of rubber, and are hollow to provide a place for the food. These toys are stuffed with their usual food, it works best with dry food with the occasional treat. Your puppy is encouraged to focus on getting the food. These toys include the famous Kong, Biscuit Balls and Dog Pyramids.
Kong stuffing becomes an art. You need to make sure that some food comes out quite quickly to encourage the puppy to keep trying. The rest of the food is release more slowly and the puppy really has to try hard to get the food. He will get soon get the idea and knowhow. If it does become too easy for him, one suggestion is to soak some of his normal kibble in water, stuff the Kong and then place it in the freezer. Iced Kong! To get all the meal will take a lot of persistence on the part of your puppy.
Biscuit balls have small holes to put the dried dog food in. The dog then has to roll the ball around to try and get the food to come out again. Dog Pyramids work in a similar way. The pyramid is weighted at the bottom so it keeps popping upright and the puppy has to keep pushing it over to get the food out.
My dog has had all three types of dispenser since being a puppy. Her favourite is undoubtedly the Kong which she picks up and throws around just to get the food out. Great fun and it takes her quite a while as some of the food has been frozen.
So avoiding the dog bowl for her dinner gets her playtime, work time and time to be inventive as well as her dinner. Your puppy will thank you for it!
