반려견에게 사료를 줄 때 피해야 할 큰 실수 #92

But when you know predictably you've put down a meal, the puppy's eaten. When the puppy backs away from that food, if there's any left, you pick it up and then you're going to take that puppy outside for a walk because you know when they've had that meal. So, for sure, if you have a puppy, you do not... Let's face it. If you want your dog to live a long life with less health issues, that alone should make us all say, okay, all right, I'll never put food down and leave it down. That's a biggie. But for puppies, it's just super important because you're teaching... A lot of times you could teach a puppy to be a picky eater by leaving the food down all the time. Because you know what? I don't really have to eat now. It'll be there whenever I want it. And if I want it now, fine. And if I don't want it, fine. So, puppies, definitely. But what about the health of other dogs? There has been studies done on this, like this one by a list of people. And it was published in Javma Journal of Veterinary Medicine. Boom. Chaka-laka. I'll leave a link to that in the show notes. And they looked at 48 eight-week-old Labrador puppies. And they split them into two groups. Half, they gave free choice feeding, the same brand of dog food. And the other half were given the opportunity to eat just two meals a day of the same brand of dog food. And then at two years of age, they looked at these dogs' hip x-rays. Now, the group that were given access to free feeding, 18 of those 24 puppies by the age of two had hip dysplasia, which meant they are going to have a limited life. They, depending on the degree, the severity of the hip dysplasia, they are going to develop arthritis. They may have arthritis changes at the age of two. That means that they are going to have some sort of pain element to their life, which means their mobility is going to be less. And it's preventable because in the other group, only five of the 24 dogs in the other group were dysplastic. Of course, hip dysplasia is dependent upon genetics as well, but definitely allowing the dogs to free choice feed, graze feed has a huge impact on that. Now, what other health impact does that have is dogs who are allowed to pick their own food when they want it all day long, they have more obesity. 40% of dogs in the general population are obese. That not just fat, they are obese. And a big part of that is they're being fed too much food because food today is so high in calories. And a lot of dogs today live a pretty sedentary life. And one plus one equals big fat dogs. Obese dogs don't live as long as fit dogs. The same is true for us people.

You want to keep a dog as fit and healthy as possible. You want to keep them at an ideal weight. You do not want your dog carrying extra weight because it not only leads to a shortened life, but to a lot more health problems during that shortened life. So, we know that it can cause health problems. We know that it can lead to obesity and it definitely is going to impact the quality of that dog's life. In addition, by not putting down a bowl of food twice a day, you're missing a great training opportunity with the dog because when you're free choice feeding, that bowl of food isn't looked upon with the same excitement. Why should it be? It's there all the time. All you're doing is topping it up. When you want to train your dog with food, they might be engaged with you for a little bit, but if it gets a little bit, oh, this is not interesting to me. I'm going to walk away because I really don't care about your food. It makes training so darn difficult. Food is plentiful in my world. It's everywhere. It's not really that important. Imagine if you had the opportunity to eat the same food and it was plentiful and you could get it like every hour of the day, it would eventually become, you know, not that important. And the same is true for dogs who get access to free choice feed. Plus the fact that when you would go to train that dog, even if you could get them interested in the food, they're probably either partially or fully full. So, they couldn't physically eat more food. Now, the other side of that coin is dogs who are not free choice fed, who are given a bowl of food in the morning and another bowl of food at night, that they are going to be more keen to train and work with you. That you can use those two opportunities when the food is coming. It's more exciting to that dog because they haven't seen a bowl of food in eight to 10 hours. When you go to put it down, you can ask them for a simple behavior. Like my dogs, it's hang out in the crate and I don't want your paws touching the floor is the puppy's criteria. And when you do that, I will deliver food to you. And if you don't do that, then we will wait until your paws go in the crate. It's a great opportunity to train the dog. Maybe a behavior that you're working on, hold a sit while I put the bowl down. Don't dive in. You're teaching the dog that when I ask you to do something and you do it, then I will give you what you want, which is your big bowl of food. So, the other thing that maybe isn't so obvious about this scenario is you are the one delivering the food.

Now, when you pour it and it's always there, it's the floor magically erupted this food. It has nothing to do with you. So, when you're delivering it and you're asking for a behavior, the value of the food goes through you and it deepens the relationship you have with your dog as does all that extra training that you get to do with your puppy or dog. And so, when you're free choice feeding, you're losing a lot of opportunities. It's a common question that we get in our online classrooms is that, you know, my dogs don't seem to be as keen as your dogs are in the video. And the first question that I or one of the members of my team is going to ask you is, please describe your feeding routine with your dog. And most of the time it's predictable that, well, my dog is a picky eater, probably because it's been allowed to be. My dog is a picky eater, so I just leave the food down all day. We can fix this and I will get to that later, but let's keep addressing why we don't want a free choice feed. A lot of times when people put food in a bowl, they just tend to top it up. And so, some of the food may have gone rancid or it may have attracted insects into the bowl. So, it's a health risk when you're leaving food out all day. Now, I hope if you are one of those people that you aren't leaving wet food because that can go bad much, much faster than kibble. But if you're leaving just dry kibble, then you've got to be sure that the dog's drinking enough water to balance that dry dehydrated kibble. Another reason why it's not good for your dog's health if you free choice feed is because when I put my dog's breakfast down, if they leave some and walk away, I have a heads up, they might not be feeling well. And then I'll put down their dinner at night. And if I have a pattern of suddenly they stopped eating in the morning, but they're eating more at night, then I can go to my veterinarian and say, here's what I've seen. You don't have that opportunity if the food's there all the time. The other thing you don't have the opportunity is to plan for some fun exercise. So, if I'm going to let my dogs go for a big swim, then I know it's not going to be right after they've eaten. But if you don't know when that is, you can't plan for that intense exercise with your dog. Another problem you might be seeing if you're free choice feeding is when I put down a meal for my dog and they eat it. And then for my dogs, it's 12 hours in between most meals. When I put down another one, I've given their stomach time to empty. So, in between the food in a dog's stomach usually takes eight to 10 hours to digest.

And so, then it goes into the small intestine. And so, it triggers a hunger response. You are never triggering a hunger response when the food's always there. Again, leading to more picky eaters and leading to a dog who is less interested in training. If you are a person like me who wants to use reinforcement in my training, you have eliminated the possibility of using food reinforcement and you've got to get more clever on how you can do things like only use toys or activities to train your dog. It doesn't have to be that way. Now, if you're saying, Susan, okay, I want to change. I'm going to flip this around. I'm going to give you a plan that you can do. Number one, you're going to decide how much food that dog really needs. Are they too thin? Are they too heavy? Let's get them into a good weight. And if you aren't sure what that good weight is, take a look at other dogs. Look online, you know, look around and ask, how much does your dog weigh? It's the same. So, if you have a Border Collie and your Border Collie is like 20 inches tall and weighs 50 or 60 pounds or more, then I got to tell you, very likely it's overweight and it may possibly be obese. Now, I'm not saying there aren't Border Collies out there that are 50 or 60 pounds, but chances are very slim. For example, the heaviest Border Collie in my household is Swagger and he's 42 pounds and he's 21 inches at the shoulder and he's got a lot of muscle on him. My young puppy, this, only weighs 30 pounds. Take a look online. Ask around, what's your, you know, what's your dog weigh? Ask, come to YouTube and put it in the comments. And I bet there'll be people that'll say, well, I have a friend and their dog's really fit and it's that breed and it weighs this. Now, again, it doesn't mean that is your dog, but you can go to your veterinarian and say, look it, I really want my dog to be lean because I know lean dogs live a lot longer. Can you let me know what you think? So, we've got a goal. You're going to weigh your dog at least once a month. But if you want your dogs to either gain or lose weight, you should be weighing them every week. I personally like to feed my dogs in a stainless steel bowl. I think that's far more sanitary. I'm going to give a link in the show notes to the bowls that I love and how you can get bowls just like them. But those bowls have to be washed after at least once a day. My dog's bowls get washed after every meal. And once a week they get put into the dishwasher for sanitizing. Now we hand wash with hot soapy water. Both your dog's food bowl and their water bowl need to be washed regularly.

If you have a picky eater, I'm going to give you ideas on how you can change that. But if you listen to episode 70 of Shaped by Dog, where I was talking about your puppy's first day and night, you would have learned that I like to feed 75% of my meals in the form of training, which means they'll be hand-fed to the dog and we'll be playing training games. If you are in one of my classes like Recallers or Homeschool the Dog or any of our agility programs, then of course you've got a whole slew of games that you can play with your dog. If you aren't in any of my programs, but you're interested in playing one of our training games, I'm going to give you a link in the show notes on how you can get access to some of those games right here on YouTube. I've got a bunch of them, both for puppies and guess what? Any games that I've got there for puppies can be used on any age dog. Just check out the games I have here on YouTube. They may be listed as puppy games, but they can be used and effectively used for any age dog. 75% of those meals go into training games and 25% just go to the experience of here's your food, eat your meal out of the bowl. So they get the experience of eating out of the bowl. You don't have to be hand-feeding them all their meals. Now, if you're super busy in the morning, you can go to 50% of the meal in the bowl and 50% hand-fed and then do 100% of that meal training games at night. All right, let's talk picky eaters. If you've got a really picky eater, here's what I'd like you to do. I'd like you to stop giving them a chance to walk away from a full bowl of food. Stop letting them say, I don't want that food. And then you putting some of your human table scraps on top. What you're going to do is you're going to put down just a, you know, a spoonful of dog food in that bowl and put it down. If the dog sniffs it and walks away, then take it up until the next meal time. Now, I feed my dogs somewhere between 8 and 10 in the mornings. And on weekends, I feed them at 5.30 in the morning. And then they get fed somewhere around 5 or 5.30 in the afternoon. So, if I had a picky eater, I would give them that small meal. And if they walked away, I would give them the next one the next time around. I would then maybe change out that food and try a different food for the next meal. When I get them to eat, so let's say they eat at 8 o'clock in the morning, I would offer them another small meal at noon. And then another small meal at 5. And then another small meal, say, before bedtime. And then I'm just getting them the rehearsal of finishing a small meal.

Now, if you have a dog that loves like going for a car ride or going outside, you throw the ball or playing a game of tug. When you give them a small meal and they eat it, say, let's go do X. And that X is whatever that dog really loves. And that way we're helping to build value for when you finish your bowl, we get to do something you really love. Now, you don't have to do this for the rest of their life, but we are conditioning the dog to finish their bowl. And it is possible to turn that picky eater into a dog who really loves their food. Don't be afraid to let that dog miss a meal. Some dogs can maybe even miss two meals. Now, this is also dependent on the breed. If you have a breed that is prone to bloat, definitely. Check with your veterinarian about your plan. Susan Garrett says I should let my dog miss a meal. And they might say, well, not good for that breed. Okay. So, I want to caution you. Check with a veterinarian before you decide that your dog's going to skip a meal. But most dogs will skip a meal without a problem. And they might even skip two meals without a problem. And then the next time you put down food, they're not going to say, oh, food is everywhere. Food is plentiful. It's not that important to me. They're going to go, food is limited and valuable. People are awesome because they bring me food. I kind of like food. We're going to grow that intensity for food, which is going to help you be able to train your dog using the food. And that is the sweet spot we're looking for. So, go from a free feeder. And yes, I recognize free feeding is easy for you. I dump a big pile of kibble in a bowl and I walk away and I come back and I check it every couple of days. I hope after today's podcast, you're convinced you are no longer a free feeder and your dog is going to turn into a dog who looks forward to mealtimes because it's a bonding event for the two of you. I'll see you next time here on Shaped by Dog. Shaped by Dog.