5 Things To Remember When Feeding Your Dog
Posted on September 13, 2012 by Joy of Living No comments
Most of the time, we don’t tend to spend a lot of time thinking about the feeding ritual for our dogs. In an article entitled, “Setting The Table” The Bark magazine spells out a few things we can do to maximize meal time for our dogs:
- Teach your dog sit/wait. Many dogs get very excited at mealtime and will jump around, causing commotion and potentially a mess. Teaching your dog to sit while you prepare his food, then wait once you put the food down, will lend some calmness to the meal. While in the teaching process, make sure to enforce the sit and the wait, not allowing access to the food until they abide by the rules. It doesn’t usually take long for dogs to learn these commands.
- Wash your dog’s bowls regularly. Dog bowls, even though they look licked clean, can harbor bacteria. Use stainless steel or ceramic because they don’t hold bacteria like plastic bowls.
- Refresh the water when you refresh the food. Water in the bowl can accumulate dirt and dust during the day. Would you drink water in the evening that you’d poured first thing in the morning? Fresh water is a nice acccompaniment to your dog’s meal.
- Be exact when measuring food. Just one month of feeding as little as 10% too much food can result in weight gain of a pound or more.
- Feed twice a day. This keeps your dog from being ravenously hungry or overly full. Two smaller meals also puts less stress on your dog’s digestive system.
Photo Source: Professor Bop vis Flickr Creative Commons
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