hi all,

would just like to know, do you doggy people feed your pup/dog before his walk or after??

my husbands reaconing is to feed him first, that way he can have a good 'clear out'. (poo)

but i think its best to feed him after his walk, so he isnt walking on a full stomach.

so, what do you lot reacon? :P

ps....i know i cant spell 'reckon' :P

i always feed at least an hour after, reduces risk of bloat on larger breeds, and i feel more comfortable for dogs whilst exercising.

Gemma x

If you change a baby's nappy (as in human baby) before a feed,it will always obliged you by filling it:) so you have to repeat the procedure after the feed.
So I would go with small meals then walkies,but I'm not a puppy expert.

Porkie,
that's just what happened with my first. Took me 2 days to figure it out and not one midwife pointed it out. :(

Stevo, feeding stimulates the poo reflex (technical term!) so why not feed, let out in the garden to do business then walk later on? Simple. :D

Kath.

Before or after, but leave at least an hour between feed/exercise or exercise/feed.
:)

thank you people, thats helped rather alot. :)

glad to see im not the only one up at this hour!! LOL :P

It also depends on what you feed, apparently dry food can take three hours to digest, so I would always wait until after a walk to feed dry food. Mine are on Naturediet which digests quicker, but I will only feed them first if I know they are not going to be walked for a couple of hours. Besides I am sure they are more comfy running around without a full stomach and they really look forward to having their meal when they return

Hayley

I've been up since 5.30!! But my brain has only just joined me. :D

but isnt it great that we all jump straight on to 'champ dogs' !! - what great people we must be! :D

Kath i have to agree with you on the brain front Ive just realised its Thursday I thought it was Wednesday

I always walk first and feed later.
Although dogs have the freedom of large garden and can go out whenever they like.
Regards,
linda

hi jolin,

i think i might of cracked it, my hubby feeds him early in the morning when he gets up for work, time ive got up, normaly 2/3 have passed, and i tend to take him for a walk then.

I think in the evenings i will walk him first, then give him his dinner, as one post said, (chaliepud) it will give him something to look forward to when he gets in.

and he has a big garden to run in incase he does need to go again! - so i think problem now sorted! :)

Thanks all :D

Hi

Think about this logically (and forget about the ristks of bloat for now with exercise after feeding).

In the wild a dog would hunt (exercise) possibly very strenuously and then, if successful, eat. Once having eaten its fill it would probably eliminate rest. I feel we should encourage our dogs to follow a similar pattern.

Christine

To help prevent bloat which is a killer, it is best not to feed your dog for an hour before or after a walk, so in a way you are both wrong. :D

On the other hand in the wild Canids would have to excersise before a meal (hunting down the dinner) and then would definately rest after.

thanks 'brainless' :)

A thought has occurred (and I'm not trying to pick a fight with anyone!!) - we always claim "in the wild, dogs do xxxx, so that must be right". How do we know it's right? How do we know that many don't die after doing it?
:)

I presume in the wild a dog would have to eat immediately after the 'chase' to prevent other dogs stealing it's catch, so it's got no choice in the matter ;)

I have seen 1st hand the 'killer' bloat an it isn't one experience i'd like to repeat.
I leave at least 2 hours before feeding after exercise,(from a raised bowl of course lol)
Sarah

Good point JG :) though I think what they do must be more right than wrong otherwise the species would have died out long ago. I suppose there are risks whichever way.

Kath. :)

Jeangenie,

Absolutely! Wild animals usually do not live out their full species lifespan - and it's not just because something bigger eats them.

In the wild animals suffer famine and drought, they are forced to eat "species inappropriate" foods rather than starve, they can be infested with fleas and worms ... and a whole host of other natural horrors that shorten their
lives. After 15,000 years of living amongst humans most of these evironmental hazards have been virtually eliminated or controlled for domesticated dogs.

Unfortunately in some ways, man tinkered with dogs over that period through selective breeding and created some breeds which now have their own anatomical hazards - like a very deep chest which makes them vulnerable to bloat.

I feed my dog (a Cairn) and she exercises when she wants - couldn't stop her unless I bolted her paws to the ground. Fortunately, the breed does not have a problem with bloat. When I had GSDs I always soaked their dry food and did not exercise them 30 minutes before or an hour after eating.

Stacey

But in the wild - dogs are smaller. I was told that one of the reasons that large dogs are more prone to bloat is because they weren't 'designed' to be so big :) Lions etc will always sleep after eating (I would if I could :D ) - but they have evolved naturally over a long period of time, so can cope with it.

Shoot me down if I'm wrong :D

Daisy

Hi Daisy,

Yup, that's one of the results of selective breeding - very small dogs and very large dogs.

Years ago a vet told me that the species "natural" weight is apx. 30 lbs. (This was after I was moaning about my Yorkie growing well over size.)

I've seen a couple of programmes about the origin of dogs recently on Nat'l Geo and Animal Planet Channels - and all the wild dogs would most definitely fit in what we would call "medium" size.

Lions are a different family - are they not? Big cats :-) I don't know enough about them to know if they bloat. The biggest wild Canid I believe is one of the breeds of wolf.

Stacey

Daisy, 'wild dogs' range in size from the Fennec Fox (18 - 22cm tall, 1- 1.5k) to the Timber Wolf (75 - 80 cm tall, up to 60k)

Wild dogs are a separate from wolves and foxes, there is less variation in size in wild dogs than there are in wolves, for example.

"Wild dogs represent a unique lineage within the wolf-like canids. They are the only members of the genus Lycaon, and some taxonomists have placed them in a sub-family, the Simocyoninae, distinct from most of the other canids (Wozencraft 1989). Although this sub-family division is no longer recognized (Wozencraft 1989), recent phylogenetic analyses using molecular genetics have supported wild dogs' place in their own genus (Girman et al. 1993). An analysis of sequence data from 2001 b.p. of the cytochromeb, cytochrome oxidase I, and cytochrome oxidase II genes showed that wild dogs are distinct from the wolves and jackals of the genus Canis (Figure 2.1, Girman et al. 1993)."

Stacey

Interesting! If that is indeed so, why do 'behaviourists' continually point to the behaviour of wolves to get people to understand their dog's behaviour? If they are a different sub-species, then wolf behaviour, diet and feeding patterns are as alien to the domestic dog as to the South American bush dog.
:)

This is so true. Why people continually point to wolf behaviour in the wild in order to decide how the domestic dog lives in our house continues to amaze me. :) There is little correlation.

I guess behaviourists keep pointing to the wolf because it is a) cool :-) b) most people think they know what wolves look like and have no idea what any of the wild dogs look like at all. The behavior of wild dogs and wolves is essentially the same, so it is a fair comparison.

If you go back far enough there most likely was a common ancestor to wolves and dogs. A programme on wild dogs in the Middle East speculated that the ancestor may have been a small species of wolf. Basically, it's all a bit of educated guessing ... but interesting. It used to be thought that all dogs were derived from the grey wolf "only 12,000-15,000" years ago. Now there is more information from genetics as well as more information about how human beings may have migrated around the globe.

Personally, I think that as dogs first became domesticated 15,000 or so years ago many of the comparisons made between wolves and dogs are downright dangerous, especially when it comes to controlling behaviour.

Stacey

Behaviourists would be better looking at the Canaan dogs that come directly from the desert they are very close to "wild dogs" & to me better than wolves for comparisons to dogs

Being part Israeli they are very prized to me would that I could have one

Why can't they just look to domestic dog behaviour??! ;)

janet

The canaan is a "primitive"breed & when obtained from the desert is probably is one of the most natural of breeds

It is of course a domestic dog

Hi - I have a friend with Canaans - and great dogs they are too - but aren't they essentially feral dogs in the "wild"? Still - granted - a lot closer to the average dog than a wolf! :)

Janet

What about dingoes? they must be pretty close to the ultimate 'wild dog' (even though they look like yellow labrador crosses).

I have met someone who keeps a Dingoe as a pet in a flat on the outskirts of Warsaw. He had to contend with some very strange primitive behaviours, and cannot let him off in the forest that the flats back onto. He is also male dog aggressive, but fine wwith bitches.

The problem with dingoes now is that they have inbred with domestic dogs - so some of them may indeed have lab blood! To find pure dingos scientists now have to go way into the least populated areas of Austrailia and genetically test them to find out if they are pure dingo. In fact, the "savage" nature of some dingos is thought to come because of crosses with domestic dogs brought over by Europeans, beginning centuries ago.

Anyway, I think dingos are gorgeous animals.

Stacey

Hi Janet,

The Canaan dogs in the wild are not feral, eg, domesticated animals that are loose in the wild. Canaan dogs are true wild dogs, some of which have been domesticated.

Stacey

After nearly losing our female to bloat (gdv)earlier in the year,we got lots of info from the vets and any deep chested breed can suffer from bloat ,even a daschund.

Hi everyone, i've just read through this post & was just wondering, im a personal trainer & like to train early in the morning, but I would never train on an empty stomach nor a full one so will have something light like fruit, does this not apply to dogs is it really ok to take for long walks/runs on an empty stomach?

I walk mine in the morning early(5.45), and feed late afternoon (4ish) with a short walk before bed 8'ish.
Sadly this didn't help my Chester with the dreaded bloat.
Karen.

Hi Karen,

I've known many GSD breeders over the years - almost all of them have lost dogs to bloat. Most of them kept ten-15 dogs at a time - all fed the same amount, same food, at the same time .. and one day one of them bloats. No explanation. Which is the toughest thing about bloat, so far there is no hard evidence about what the triggering factor really is that causes a dog to bloat.

Stacey

MOst up to date behaviourists are trying to get away from the wolf link thing - a good read for anyone interested is the Coppinger's book, "Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behaviour and Evolution." . It's hailed as a groundbreaking book ;)

A fair bit of work was done on trying to determine the true origin of the dog and they spent some time on island areas where the dogs live in family groups with little or no hierarchy - i think it was the island of Pemba. In the preface the authors state that very few dog books have been written by biologists and that this new book is based on canine biology, explaining what canines are, why they are different not only from each other but from wolves; how they got like that, and how their relationship with people can be enriched so that both species can benefit :)

It really is a fascinating book and anyone who is pondering the whole dog/wolf question would enjoy reading it. The bit about Dmitri Belyaev breeding genetically tame foxes (fur farm sadly) and what happened when he selected solely on tame behaviour is very strange. And the book is full of similar thought provoking snippets......

I feel that dry food is a major cause in digestive problems, so personally never feed it (JMHO!) and my dog gets exercised first and fed after, unless she is walked late and then she is fed first and exercised at least an hour after, preferable more :)

Lindsay

Hi Lindsay,

Sound interesting, I will get a copy next time I order books.

Stacey

It really is good Stacey, i am sure you will enjoy it :)

Lindsay