Our deaf English Pointer Tyler was always a big breakfast eater but never seemed very interested in dinner. We would try different foods, mix it up in different ways, but usually he’d just nibble at dinner and leave most of it in his bowl. This was always a little upsetting to us, because Tyler is a high-energy, high-burn hunting dog who needs as many calories as we can get in him.
Then Kathryn and Beth discovered that Tyler would devour his dinner on one condition: that he gets to eat in his "boat," as we call it. This is the bottom half of an old crate that we’ve used as one of the beds for the dogs who aren’t crated at night in Widget’s House. We pile some blankets in it and they love sleeping there. Well, one evening someone — I’m not sure who actually made the discovery — put a bowl of food inside the boat while Tyler was lying in it. He sprang to life, checked out the bowl, and wolfed down all the food.
Thus dining in the boat became standard operating procedure for feeding Tyler. I took the first photo of Tyler this evening while he was busy eating; I took the second photo about 15 minutes later, while he was enjoying a quick after-dinner snooze on the cool linoleum floor.
Thanks to the boat, our once too-skinny Tyler is now carrying a very healthy amount of weight and looking really good!
Rolling Dog Farm Blog 
Leave a comment