The answer on how to serve your dog food may be a glaringly obvious one but if you are feeding all or part of your dogs food in a bowl, only small or medium dogs should eat with their bowl directly on the floor. Dogs of Labrador height or larger should be fed with their bowl at shoulder height and on a stand. This can aid the movement of the food to the dogs stomach and prevent gastric dilation.
Human beings have to chew thier food to get the digestive juices going while the dogs digestive juices do not start to flow until the food reaches the stomach. This is why dogs seem to gulp their food down and this in turn can leads to air entering the digestive system and causing dilation
With a large dog eating from a bowl in the floor the food has to travel upwards and so more air is taken in. This is probably the main reason why it is always better to feed your adult dog twice a day rather than give him one huge meal. Puppies of course are differant and need to be fed between 4 and 6 times a day to begin with. When the dog is living on a natural diet then he will eat this outside and also will usually lie down
With regard to giving your dog Tit bits,which of course they love just remember that dogs cannot digest refined sugar. Do not give them those nice little biscuits, or snack food made for human consumption. They love them too. Tit bits can be used for training exercises where they should be the branded type or small pieces of apple or cheese. A big nono is chocolate that is designed for humans and that goes for dark chocolate especially. It contains a substance called Theo bromine which is a bitter white crystalline alkaloid related to caffeine and Cocoa. Theobromine is a heart stimulant and depending on how much the dog has eaten and his size this could cause your dog serious problems. Theo bromine is also found in cocoa shell mulch, the type of mulch that is used for many pot plants so be aware that any potted plants that you buy may also present a real danger to your dog.
Lets look at how much we feed our dog
As a rough guide he should be having about 20 percent of his total target body weight in food over one week. To begin with use your common sense and either decrease or increase the amount depending on hos the puppy is growing or the dogs weight. Once a dog is fully grown you will have to level out the amounts and may have to reduce them.
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