Our Feeding Routine for Behavior and Health

Mealtime for puppies is not just about food. It is a prime opportunity for behavioral training including chew toys, isolation, obedience, and crate training. Building a routine to support behavior and health is key to sticking with it beyond puppyhood. This is our feeding routine, which happens in parallel to making coffee each morning.

Know your calorie target

Keeping a healthy weight while your puppy is growing, both to support their grow and to ensure they don’t get overweight, is most accurate with a calorie target. Yes, the back of kibble bags will give you a rough range by dog weight of how many cups you should be giving. But that doesn’t take into account your dog’s breed, health issues, or weight goals from your vet. Getting a clearer target in calories is better.

The best way to know your calorie target is to ask your vet. We ask every visit and since they just accurately took his weight and saw him in person, it is an accurate and expert target. We have also used our vet’s text-a-vet service to ask for an update given changes in weight or food.

Converting calories per day to grams per day

Calories are not directly measurable in a home, so we need to convert them to a measurement we do have. This can either be volume or weight. Volume is measured buy be a measuring cup, for example. Weight is measured by a scale. Weight is much more accurate, especially with something like kibble that can settle differently. We also use a scale because it is common in our kitchen (which is also where we feed Tuna) and using a scale leads to fewer dirty dishes and cleanup.

If you know calories per day, you can convert to grams per day by dividing calories per day by the calories per gram (found on the dog food bag). Here is a walk-through example of How to Convert Calories (kcal) to Grams (g).

Preparing the food

Weighing out the food

The first time you weigh out the food you need to factor in the tare (weight) of the container. But using this trick will save time in the future. First, know your grams of food per day goal. In this example, it is 385g. Second, gather your scale, food, and container (a wide and stable container is best). You will be using this container every day, so figure out what works best for you.

Now, turn on the scale (setting to measure in grams if it isn’t) and tare to 0 without anything on it. Next put the empty container on the scale. This is the weight of the container (49g in the first picture). Zero out (or tare) the scale again. Then, weigh out your food to your gram target, in this case, 385g. This is all we need for today, but if we note how much the target food and the container weigh, then we can skip the first two steps every day in the future.

So, take the container off the scale and tare once more (fourth picture). Then place the container with food back on the scale (last picture). This weight, 435g is the weight of the container (which won’t change day to day), and the target weight of 385g. WRITE DOWN THIS NUMBER. Tomorrow, and in future days, you now only need to turn on the scale, then place the container and weigh up to 435g. This simplification makes weighing food almost as easy as using a measuring cup.

Soak and fill chew toys

The next step is to fill your container with water. The amount of water will depend on your kibble and your how difficult you’d like the chew toys to be. More water makes it harder.

How long you soak the kibble for is also a measure of difficulty, the longer the kibble soaks, the harder of a challenge it will be for your dog at mealtime. You may need to start with little or no soaking in order to teach your dog how to use the chew toys. We soak however long it takes to finish making coffee, so it is not an exact science.

After soaking, you then fill chew toys. We started with Topples as a young puppy and have since graduated up to XL Hard and Extreme Kongs. We use five a day as that works with our routine and lifestyle, but this is where you’ll want to customize your routine to support what you want your life with your puppy to be.

Because the container for weighing and soaking is wide, it is best to hold the Kong over the container and spoon kibble into the big hole. Excess water will exit through the small hole and back into the container, keeping everything clean (or at least contained). You can decide how much to pack the Kongs. It can be very loose (and with minimal soaking, this will be easier for the dog) or it can be really packed tight (and with a lot of soaking this will be hard and time-consuming for the dog — which isn’t a bad thing).

After each Kong is filled, they go into an old take-out soup container. This makes sure that if there is any other way to leak out, it leaks into the container and not into the freezer. Finally, all Kongs go into our freezer, where we have a dedicated shelf on the door. They freeze relatively quickly and do not transfer smell at all in the freezer.

We always leave the first meal of the day in the original container. If there is too much excess water, we’ll drain that. Water that tastes like kibble will be drunk regardless of thirst, which can cause accidents from overdrinking.

Taking full advantage of this exciting time of the day, Tuna is asked to be calm during the weighing, soaking, and filling, and then asked to sit and wait while we put the Kongs in the freezer.

A few notes:

• This entire routine takes less than 10 mins and most of the time is spent with the kibble soaking. It is also interwoven with making coffee, so the real order of events might be: Start kettle for coffee, weigh kibble, water kibble, grind the coffee, pour coffee (usually a Hario V60), fill Kongs, freeze Kongs, wash hands, drink coffee.
• While we didn’t feel the need to stick to crate training, we did find our crate useful for other things. We use it for water and food bowls. And it is a great shelf to put all things dog on top of. In addition, when we feed Tuna a frozen kong, he goes into his crate (our command for meal time is actually still “Crate Time!”) we can close and lock the door which is useful, for example, if the super is coming in or something.

Behavioral uses throughout the day

Now armed with a set of five frozen Kongs filled with the best kibble this dog has ever had, you are now in control of how to use them. For us, each one gives about 5-10 mins of focused, quiet activity. After Tuna finishes his Kong, he usually lays down and cleans himself and then naps, so the effect is much more than just 10 mins. What can we use this for?

• Teaching legal chew toys – what’s more appealing than a chew toy filled with food?
• Crate training – what space is more fun than the one where you get a chew seat filled with food
• An automatic way to “ramp down” or redirect – when things get out of control (zoomies on the couch come to mind) a frozen Kong with food interrupts any behavior and immediately calms the dog down. Then 10 minutes later, the calm continues.
• Human meal time – give the humans some peace and quiet
• Separation and leaving the home – Giving a Kong as we put on shoes to leave the dog at home makes our leaving easy. Tuna won’t even care that we leave, finish his Kong, then notice we are gone and go to sleep. The frozen Kong breaks his building anxiety seeing us get ready.