Hi All

I am slowly changing my dogs food from wafcol to origen and have found that the origen biscuit kibble is smaller than the wafcol, robbie tends to just gobble them up and not crunch them properly, not sure if a lot of dogs do this with their meals.
He scoffs them in no time and loves them but its just that he doesn't crunch them like he did the wafcol.

Dogs don't have grinding molars to crush their food to start breaking it down as we and herbivores do; their molars are for slicing arge pieces of food to get them small enough to swallow. If the food is already smaller than their gullet then it'll just go straight down.

None of my dogs, except one, crunch their food, they just swallow as quickly as possible! Even something like a Bonio is just crunched until it's small enough to be swallowed, and that is invariably one or two crunches.

Dallie gulps and gone. Pointer chews each mouth full like an old man with dentures. He would be perfect for one of those talking dog adverts!!

My 5 year old inhales her food ... no matter how small or how big her kibble (we recently changed to a food that's twice the size of her previous kibble), it's just sucked down and gone in a nano second!  I've tried slowing her down by placing balls in her bowl or raising her bowl.  It slows her but it doesn't make her crunch!
My 4 yr old boy eats very nicely, lots of crunching and slower than the girls - very well mannered :-D
My 3 yr old girl crunches/gobbles.
My not quite 2 yr old boy and girl are very dainty eaters - the boy eats quicker than his dad, but it's nicely crunched, the girl takes one piece at a time and takes forever!! Oh, and if she drops any crumbs outside of her bowl, she has to clean all those up before returning to picking up the next individual piece out of her bowl. But I'm not complaining as I've found the food that she eats ... the whole bowl full, even it if takes forever :-D :-D

my two boys inhale the food and my younger bitch it very dainty about it

> robbie tends to just gobble them up and not crunch them properly,

Buster is the same. Even kibble that has the pieces in, designed to "encourage chewing in large dogs", he'll swallow by the gob full :)

I've often wondered if it would be practical to produce a dried food in slabs or large biscuits, something like an enormous Bonio, to make large dogs crunch rather than just swallow?

Mine crunch their food no matter how small, have no food inhalers here ;)

Crunches it piece by piece and is quite partial to taking a mouthful to bed with him them eating it there before returning for another mouthful.

Several of my dogs are nick named 'The Hoover' for good reason :)

We have one hoover one cruncher

> Pointer chews each mouth full like an old man with dentures.

Haha sounds like my GSP...he is so deliberate over every mouthful!!

The mastiffs just open their mouths and hoover it in!!!

my dog eats her dry food peice by peice if its just dry and takes forever lol however if the dry is mixed with something a little more tasty then she gobbles it down, but she always crunches:)

> nick named 'The Hoover'

If I had been aware of my dallies eating habits, his pre rescue name, Tyson, may have been changed by only one letter !!

My large dog teleports his food whereas the smaller one, who is manic in every other respect, is a very slow and dainty eater who won't even attempt to eat anything that is larger than his mouth.

Mine prefers to crunch but because I have an eternal fear of gastric torsoin I soak her kibble to slow her down she has added raw vegetables though so she can crunch some of it.
I prefer to clean her teeth myself  rather than run the risk of bloat or torsion.

My large bitch crunches very carefully, regardless of kibble size -- completely different from my previous, all male, dogs that just teleport food from bowl to stomach.

Depends on how hungry she is.  If she's just snacking, she'll crunch away.  But if she hasn't eaten for awhile and is really hungry, it just goes straight down!

> one hoover

I have a serious 'hoover' she's only a Sheltie but I'm convinced she could eat for a wolf :-D

I have to spread her food over a large plate to make her work for it, if it's confined in a small bowl she just sucks the lot up in one gulp, nothing is chewed whether it's large or small subsequently I worry about large pieces choking her so I check the size.

She eats so fast that she can end up 'honking' because the food is stuck in her gullet and won't go down, because of this I wet her kibble or add other wet food to it.

I had a 9 year old overweight bitch back due to as marriage breakdown, my hubby nicknamed her porky.

She was a food inhaler so I shut her outside at meal times and scattered her food on the ground.  This made her eat slowly.

2 of my girls eat like ive never feed them ,other girl crunches every kibble and our male well just depends how hes feeling lol...but i must say the 2 greedy girls do suffer from the runs more? any eles have this problem with greedy dogs? their not over fed.