According to Royal Canin, the large size kibble and unique shape is supposed to slow down consumption rate which in turn can help prevent boat, but from my personal experience [my own GSD as well as my sisters] both tended to pick up a bite of kibble, walk across the room and drop it on the floor and pick it back up one kibble at a time to eat it lol. I've also read in books this is a common GSD trait [and why you're not supposed to feed them outside in a graveled kennel, they can accidentally eat rocks.] Does anyone else's German Shepherds do this?? :p

As for my CsV, he 'wolfs' down his food but always rests afterwards so I think he's safe. ;)

Personally I doubt very much that any size of a dry dog food, unless it's as big as the dog's head, is going to encourage the dog to chew.. a dog's teeth are not made to chew, they are made to rip. Has anyone's dog ever thrown up after eating? The dried food is still whole usually..

I think that Royal Canin's claim and 'breed specific' food is just a marketing campaign, honestly. If you are afraid of your dog eating too fast and contributing to bloat, you can feed your dog off of, for example, a wide cookie sheet. Spreading the food out will slow consumption. If you are in the US, you can also try a BrakeFast bowl. :)

According to Royal Canin:

Source: http://products.royalcanin.us/produc...epherd-24.aspx

(At the bottom)

Our dogs love the formula, regardless of breed. :) Luna loves the puppy version (also designed as an "X", just a lot smaller than the adult kibble).

There are also food bowls you can get to help slow own their food intake:

http://www.strangenewproducts.com/20...ggie-bowl.html

It forces them to eat around the "pegs" thus slowing their intake down.

As the reason seen to cause more problems with dry food feeding after the research I was talking about (Journal of the American Animal Hospital Association), is the fact that with this kind of feeding the time that you can still find food in the stomach after feeding is much longer than with other food and the stomach itself is larger in those dogs, I doubt very much that the shape of the kibbles does make much differences.
Another point is that a high amount of Carbo Hydrates also gives a higher risk, looking at the list of ingredients there are brown rice and oat meal as the second and third highest ingredients on the list.
That Royal Canin as a company that has dry food as its main product won´t tell you that isn´t astonishing.

Ina

Well, I guess I could only imagine how really fast my dogs would eat if they were not eating Royal Canin GS formula...
Cause even eating it they go like if there was a entire year without food!:p

Maybe I ve 2 eating machines here... LOL

Anyway, I dont know if I truly believe on Royal Canin explanation. I do believe that dogs dont use to chew food. No matter what I feed them they grab the food and it goes down to stomach without any chew, lol

Hahahaa EXACTLY!! Mine too. :p
And it's even worse when I feed him a meat diet, he turns into a fuzzy vacuum cleaner so I guess the kibble helps slow him down a little bit. ;)

If you're ever interested in feeding a raw diet - and believe me, there is no vacuum cleaning with a correctly done one - you can always PM me. :)

I should post some pictures somewhere of our dogs working on things like whole feathered chicken bigger than their head, rack of lamb ribs, whole rabbit, etc. Believe me.. when Lantis, our Dobe was on kibble he'd vacuum that up, too. There's no quickly eating appropriate prey, though, or appropriate cuts of meat. A prey-model raw diet encourages a dog to rip and shred, making use of their teeth appropriately. He's going on 13 year old and has never had a dental and his teeth are as shiny as a dog more than half his age, too. :lol:

I would like to feed raw for health reasons but seeing as I live in the city in an apartment [not for long I hope!!!!!!] keeping large chunks of frozen/raw meat would be difficult, not to mention, messsy lol. :p

Also I don't like the [natural] aggression with most dogs that comes from protecting their meat. :new_evil

If your dog protects your meat against you depends on your acting as an owner. Dogs don´t get more aggressiv by feeding raw meat.

Ina

I can second that. While raw is a high-value item, if we're feeding our dogs raw we can walk up to them and take the bowl away from them with no protests from them (at most there might be some grumbling).

They will get snarky if another dog is outside their crate, though.

Wow, why is everybody on this forum so ready to jump on another owner as soon as they can if they don't agree with them?? It's pretty sad considering we all love 'our' breed and I for one am on here to learn and have fun with other owners, not point blame or judge. :cry:

AND you should maybe ask what I mean by 'aggression' before telling me I'm a bad owner.
It is a perfectly NATURAL reaction in any wolf/dog to protect their food, it's how they assert dominance in their pack where the leaders get to eat first and will growl/attack a lower member so that they get their fair share first.

Don't tell me that you've NEVER seen a dog growl over a bone in your life?!?!?!? [Though I doubt they'd ever growl over a Milkbone. My point exactly. ;-) ]

And ANYWAY, of course Flint doesn't show aggression towards ME!!!! That was something I worked on him with since he was a pup, I can take his food away, reach my hand in his mouth whiles he's eating, etc. No matter WHAT the food/treat is with no worries and no guarding from him.
But I have had small scuffles over feeding between my actual dogs [though my GSD bitch was the alpha, not my CsV haha.] which is normal but I don't want my dogs fighting over food so kibble seems safer with occasional raw meat as treats.


http://www.freewebs.com/theanimaltrainer/wpre5.jpg

I don't think I said anything un-forward..

Feeding, like playing, or any other communal activity is one that needs monitoring and management.. whatever you choose is obviously what works for you right now! :)

As for raw being high value.. well, sometimes I wish someone could tell our dogs that. Some days they turn their nose up at the offered meal.. especially if it's their organ day.. ah well. Takes a whole lot of bribing for the young ones like getting kids to eat veggies.. searing with butter.. freezing.. adding broth.. adding mayo (that usually works). Liver is apparently the worst.

It surely wasn´t my intention to jump on you, if I did intimidate you I apologize. And this part of the forum, believe me, is the most peaceful one.
But it is also the part where a lot of people write that are not natives and therefor mostly are not perfect in this language, I surely am not. What brings a tendency to misunderstanding, Germans for example often sound rude because our language is a very direct one, sometimes too direct for English speakers.

I can´t remember anybody telling you are a bad owner. For me the point is that all latest researches show that kibbles give a higher risk of Bloat, I personally think that the form of the kibbles don´t make any difference, no matter what the producer says. You are feeding your dogs with kibbles - we too at the moment by the way - no problem for me because bloats are not very often seen.
It is very often said that raw meet makes dogs aggressiv and dangerous, what simply is wrong. The question of this string was about risk-factors of bloat, not everybody may know about the fact that raw meet doesn´t make aggressiv, that was the reason for my posting.


Well, we have at the moment 5 wolfdogs living in the house and take care for 5 European wolves that we handraised (we raised 10 in total) so I know very well about this fact. But that also is the reason why this is no point for me discussing dogs (and I now talk about me not anybody else!). Dogs are no wolves and even CSW are pure dogs in behaviour, I surely can say this, what means to me that I handle this very differently. I never get into the food discussions in our wolf-pack, I don´t want to be an alpha there, I am no wolf. But our dogs have the genetic disposition to build packs with humans and will do so, they have no problems following their rules instead of their owns. We have a simple rule in our dog-pack: When we give one dog some food, no matter what kind, this food will stay with this dog. We don´t allow stealing or bossing in this situation as long as we are there. When we leave they of course will try to steal when they don´t have anything of their own left but they won´t fight about it. Stable packs no matter if wolves or dogs don´t fight in those situation, if the dog pack is not stable I don´t go away or don´t leave them together alone with food.

To make a long story short and come back to the topic: If you want to avoid bloat it is better not to feed kibbles or if you do to mix them with left overs or meat. You can avoid fighting with simple training.
But bloat is a fatal but quite rare problem and our breed doesn´t seem to be a high risk breed, we do feed our dogs with kibbles at periods when it is easier for us and even sometimes they run around and play afterwards, our wolves surely do.

Ina

OK, I misunderstood what you were saying. If I take something away from my dogs, Zorro and Kiri will sometimes protest (in the form of grumbling, light growls) but nothing that I would consider "aggressive" (in fact, I think those acts are defensive / guardy). Of course they should protest - we aren't here because we enjoy the submissiveness and friendliness of the breed (and if we did we'd be into labs, newfies, and collies (please note: I find nothing wrong with those breeds, (yes, we also have a collie) but those breeds aren't as "intense" as vlcaks (and GSDs, malinois, doberman, etc))) we want our dogs to stand up for themselves and feel comfortable communicating with us (to a point).

I've seen (pet) dogs act truely aggressive with their food. If you went within 3-5 feet of their bowl, and it had food in it, then you're next place would be the hospital - this included the owners. THAT I have a problem with (and that is a sign of an owner who should learn more about dogs).