Feeding Tips to Avoid Obesity in Your Dog

Is your dog just plain fat! Lets call it what it is, FAT! Obesity can kill your pet no matter what breed or size it is. Lets learn how to avoid this life threatening problem.

One common problem that dog owners have with their pooches is the fact that they tend to become quite obese. Canine obesity is indeed one of the major problems dog owners face these days. Fortunately, this problem can be solved easily.

Canine obesity boils down to improper feeding, specifically, when the dog eats too fast and too much. When your dog eats too fast, this does not just lead to obesity, but also increases the likelihood of your dog choking and vomiting. Thus, dog obesity should definitely be avoided as much as possible. One of the effective ways to do this is to modify your dog bowl.

The basic premise here is to make your dog's food hard to get. Even domestic dogs have the primal instinct to gobble down their meals as soon as they are fed. By making food somewhat less accessible, your dog will have no choice but to slow down his eating speed.

So, how do you do this? You can actually use weighted balls or even large rocks for this particular technique. Find a ball or a rock that you can place in the middle of your dog's bowl. Make sure this ball or rock is indeed heavy enough so that it will not be pushed out of the dish that easily. By keeping the weight of the bowl down, your dog would then be forced to work harder for the meal. After all, your dog will have to work his way around the bowl so that he can eat all of his food.

Another modified food dish makes use of contraptions, allowing your pet to eat only a certain amount of food in one sitting. This is one of the modern dishes developed these days. However, these containers run on batteries or on electricity so when the power supply goes out, you can no longer use these dishes until you replace your supply.

This problem is easily solved by yet another modified dog dish. One particular dog dish has separate partitions that allow your dog to smell and see the food at its bottom. However, the dish has dividers that would allow your dog to consume just half a cup of food in one sitting. This space limitation allows your dog to slow down his eating speed while completing the whole meal at the same time. If it takes longer for your dog to eat his meal, he will be more satisfied and not feel like he is still hungry.

Canine obesity is indeed a problem that is easily solved. You can consult your vet for recommendations on how you should go about your feeding routine as well.

Article Tags: Canine Obesity