Is there anyway to slow a lab down when he is eating??? Bailey SNARFS down his food in about 2 seconds flat. Is it bad to eat this fast?? :confused:

Sandy my Lab takes about 20 seconds to finish a meal (but then again a meal is only a little over a cup of food). Blaze, my mixed breed, it takes her about 3 minutes to keep a little over a cup of food.

The way I see it is dogs hardly ever chew their kibble anyways, so what does it matter if I slow her down or not. She's never had a problem with eating fast, so I don't even worry about how long it takes her to eat a meal.

You can slow them down by putting a large rock, a couple of balls, or some large linked chain in the dish on top of the kibble. This way they have to eat around the objects in the dish, making them eat a lot slower.

I laugh when I read things like you should pick up a food bowl after 15 minutes if your dog has not finished his meal. I could put a 20 pound bag in fron of Levi and it would be empty in 10 minuites!! He is like an industrial vacuum!!

Levi sounds a lot like Montana. I am amazed at how fast he eats his food. He seems to chew but very fast. lol I never saw a dog eat so fast until I saw a Lab eat.

Always less than two minutes here. What a snorfhound he is!

Suzie

Yep, both of mine finish within a minute or two. Always ready to eat more too!

wow, i wish tayler would eat like the rest of your dogs, she eats SLOW, i feed her 1 cup at 3x a day and at best she will eat 2 cups combined. and is she does finish her 1 cup she will take probably 2 breaks to play then i would have to persuade her to go back to eating. she takes SO LONG TO EAT! it's frustrating because she is already small for her age in my opinion. (3months @20lbs) i wish she would eat more and faster too.. we're taking her food away after 20 min, and a lot of the time we end up saving it for the next meal. we've tried everything, cutting down on treats, playing with her food, add warm water, all those worked for a while, but still not eating consistently. i tired throwing kibbles out of the bowl and she would get real excited for that, but then will only pick up the kibble. she is healthy, very active, normal bowel movement and that should lead to a healthy appetite right? maybe watching her weight because she's seen too much underweight girls on MTV?

paul

My Max had that same problem and from what i read it was NOT a good thing (May lead to Bloat). What our Vet recomended was the Buster Cube (www.bustercube.com) This thing is GREAT. It hold about a cup of dry food and it takes Max about 10 minutes to eat it. We usually give him one cup in the bowl, and one cup in the cube.

We add water to Bacon's food to thwart bloat but a friend recommended putting the kibble on a cookie sheet or large pan with sides to make it more difficult to swallow a large mouthful at one time.

1) agree with BranNMax...we have this ball (its not the cube you have) that has all dimples in it...one of the dimples is a hole to stuff the kibble in. Abbey rolls it around the floor and one by one it drops a kibble or 2 out of the hole. We don't feed her this way all the time through it...but when she snorts her meals up...it definetely slows her up a bit

2) Abbey will wait for me to train her (sit,down,shake, stay, up, over) even though she has a full bowl to eat for free. She will go over to it, vacuum up some and come back to me for more training. She seems to like the one on one and it slows mealtime up for her...she still snorts it all up eventually.

I try not to leave uneaten food around...i'm still feeding her 3 times a day....(3 months old) We tried 2 time a day but she seemed famished the following day....we will eventually move her to that. We give her Milk Bone treats between meals...i want to start cutting those out...but if she earns it...she earns it!

Coach ate so fast, you wouldn't believe it. If you blinked you missed it. It caused her to throw up!!!! And you could see her bloated. The vet said to slow her down. SO we still give her one cup at a meal but we do a half of cup wait a few mins. and then another half. Or sometimes we feed her from our hand. But she slobbers so much b/c she still inhales. Now she's on adult food so it's a little bigger and forces her to chew. If she goes to fast I say slow down in a firm voice. Usually she does, if not I pick up the bowl. She's MUCH better now but still throws up occaisionaly. Poor baby I hate to see them not feeling well.