The way your four-legged friend eats a meal can tell you a lot about himself. After passing through very often, dogs eat extremely quickly for fear that someone may take their food away.
How your dog eats is very important because you can learn a lot about him this way. His feelings often condition a given dog’s approach to a meal. When a pet feels stressed that someone may take away his food, he tries to eat his meal as soon as possible.
What you will learn from this article:
- How a dog eats says a lot about how he feels
- Older dogs often eat very quickly
- Due to the pain in the dog’s mouth, he may eat each bite very slowly
How your dog eats
I think mealtime, next to afternoon naps, is my pup’s favourite time. As soon as the time when he usually gets his food approaches, he approaches his bowl. I love to watch his joy as he prepares his meal.
How your four-legged friend approaches food can tell you a lot about him. If you haven’t watched your dog while he eats before, I’m sure that after reading this article, your attitude will change completely.
How your four-legged friend eats can tell you a lot about him. Therefore, if I want to get to know my dog better, I recommend it. It can also help solve your dog’s health problems, as some canine diseases result from the wrong way your dog eats.
Why you should watch your dog while he eats
There are many advantages to watching your dog while he eats, so I will only tell you about a few of them. First, I think it’s worth observing how your four-legged friend approaches the food you give him. Does he react to it very enthusiastically, without much haste, or can it be said that he greedily throws himself at his bowl?
Observation of the pet’s approach to food also allows you to find out if the type of meal served does not entirely suit him. Just because your dog eats his food whole doesn’t mean he likes it. The vision of hunger can be more terrifying for a dog than eating a meal that does not suit his culinary tastes.
As I mentioned before, the wrong way the dog eats can cause health problems. Therefore, observing how a dog eats can contribute to finding the answer to the question of why the dog suffers from a given ailment.
What can you learn about your dog by the way he eats?
I’ve gathered some essential information about what your four-legged friend’s way of eating expresses. If you have not found in this article the answer to the reason for the specific way your dog eats meals, write it to me in the comment at the end of the post. I will try to answer your individual questions.
The dog eats very fast
Naturally, some dogs eat very quickly. I want to point out here that this is a constant way of eating, not a rare situation. My dog, when he is starving after playing, also in such a situation devours his meal with extraordinary speed. However, this is a situation that rarely happens.
So I’d like to focus on the situation where your four-legged friend gobbles every mealtime. He doesn’t take any breaks while eating. His bites are enormous, which means sometimes there are moments when the dog starts choking.
The dog absorbs the food in its entirety in just a few moments. What could this behaviour of your four-legged friend mean? Perhaps he feels threatened in food matters. Namely, he fears someone will take it away if he does not eat his meal fast enough.
This behaviour is often observed in dogs with a troubled past, e.g. taken under their care from a shelter. In such places, dogs often compete for food. If they don’t eat their meal fast enough, another dog may want to take it away from them.
This fast way of eating the dog can cause hiccups in the dog. That is an overall result of eating too fast. During the rapid swallowing of successive bites, many air bubbles get into the quadruped oesophagus. As a result, the dog’s body reacts with hiccups. If you want to learn more about hiccups in dogs, I refer you to my other article, which you can find HERE.
What should you do if your dog eats extremely fast and greedily? Absolutely. This way of eating will negatively affect the dog’s health and his psyche. He will always associate mealtime with something stressful, even for no reason.
If I want to teach my four-legged friend to eat slower, I refer you to another post where I guide you step by step. There are several ways to help your dog.
Dog bowl |DELI amber
The dog eats very slowly
Now let’s move on to the inverse of the problem I just told you about prolonged eating. I think every dog owner can easily distinguish the usual, calm pace of eating a dog from a slow one.
Your canine carefully chooses every bite from the bowl and chews it exceptionally slowly. Unfortunately, this is not normal behaviour. Your dog eats his meal this way for a reason.
A long way of eating may be due to the pain your pet experiences while eating. The reason for this behaviour can be many factors. Perhaps your dog has a wound in his mouth that causes him pain every time he eats his meal.
Another reason that may affect your dog’s slow eating may be dental problems. We often do not realize that our dogs can have issues with their teeth. In puppies, the process of replacing milk teeth with permanent ones occurs at some point in their lives. That usually goes smoothly, but there are dogs for whom it can be painful. Then they can eat very slowly and with a distinct grimace.
What’s more, puppies’ milk teeth can be very fragile. That is why there are cases where they break when a small dog bites something too hard. However, chipping of teeth also happens in older dogs.
A broken tooth is much more severe for a dog than you might think. The tooth residue may have sharp edges that injure your pet while eating. That may be the reason why the dog eats very slowly and carefully.
The dog may eat very slowly due to inflammation in his mouth. Unfortunately, there are many possibilities for your dog to have this problem. Therefore, contact your veterinarian if you notice a rash in your dog.
How does your dog eat
The speed at which a dog eats depends on the dog’s emotions and feelings. If the dog fears someone might take his food away, he eats exceptionally quickly. On the other hand, if your four-legged friend chews each bite very slowly, he may have inflammation in his mouth.
How is your dog eating? Please write me your answer in the comment below.
If you have any questions or want me to touch on a topic in the next post, share it with me in the comments section.
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