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Why does my dog carry a mouthful of food from his bowl to another location to eat it?
There are two schools of thought on this bizarre habit. The first says that moving their food away from its source to chow down in another location is a leftover behavior from your dog’s wild ancestors that lived, hunted, and ate in packs. In a pack, the less dominant members of the group would take a portion of the kill and move to a safe, distant location to eat in peace and to avoid being challenged by higher ranking pack members. Even dogs without four-legged family members to protect their food from continue this instinctual practice to this day.
It could also be a symptom of your dog simply not liking his bowl or where it’s located. He may not like the sound his kibble makes as it clinks and clanks along the sides of the bowl. His bowl may not be a comfortable height, width, or depth for maximum eating pleasure. His tags may bump the edge of the bowl, making an irritating sound or distracting him from the task at hand.
While this behavior is fairly harmless for kibble feeders, dogs that insist on relocating messy wet or raw foods could create quite the mess. To curb the behavior, try moving his bowl to a more secluded location. Or, try a different type of bowl entirely. If you feed from an elevated dish, try lowering it. If you feed from a bowl on the floor, try raising it. Or just switch to a flat, open dinner plate and see if the behavior stops. And, if you’ve got a multi-dog household, try feeding your dogs in separate locations.
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