trystinn | Autumn amongst us (Reply)

Feeding four dogs twice a day can be very exciting. We've managed by assigning different locations to each of the dogs and enforcing their eating only at that location. This becomes very important with Flash eating a mix of puppy and adult food, the former he's not particularly fond of. Tracker is still Tracker and a bottomless pit. Autumn, of course, is a bit worse. Their instincts are telling them to eat more, with no particular consideration for their packmates. Gracie, as the Alpha-apparent, has been incredibly annoying as she skulks about looking to see if she can intimidate the others.

I'm most concerned with our elderly collie. Glory has given up defending her food and often just wanders away, which the other dogs take as a sign to eat up. As her senility grows worse, Glory keeps forgetting where to eat and loses interest in eating after a few moments. I've taken to putting the other three dogs outside, to give her an hour or so to finish. I've even pulled her back to her food dish to encourage her. She's having fewer and fewer good days, we're down to one a week at this point.