PUPPIES AND FOOD
Your puppy’s breeder should provide you with ideas for how to meet your puppy’s nutritional requirements, including telling you the brand of food or specific diet your puppy has been eating. Suggestions should be made for the amount of food your puppy will be eating and frequency of meals from when you first get the pup through the first several months. Young puppies often eat three times a day which may be continued for several weeks after placement. By the time your puppy reaches 6 months of age, feeding 2 meals a day is generally adequate.
Food intake will increase steadily as your pup grows. A four-month-old will eat more than an eight-week-old pup and at 6-8 months the food intake will be at an adult proportion or slightly greater depending on the growth pattern of your dog, her metabolism and activity level.
Always rely on feeding recommendations from the breeder, who has chosen a diet that works best for their families of dogs.
Most breeders feed puppies in a litter from one or two large communal food dishes. Getting a puppy to eat from his own bowl, with no competition from litter mates, can present minor challenges. Some puppies are easily distracted, may wander away before finishing, may be less interested in meals at particular times of the day while gobbling up food at other times. Establishing a good pattern of feeding and eating produces dogs with a sound appetite and a lack of finicky eating behavior.
Generally speaking most puppies do best with planned regular feeding times, where food is set down and left for short periods of time, 5-15 minutes. Any uneaten food is then picked up and stored safely till the next meal time. Remember food should be refrigerated if there are perishable ingredients.
An easily distracted pup that wants to move into other pets’ food dishes should be confined to a crate or different area during feeding times, unless the owner is willing to monitor and ensure that each dog stays at her own food bowl.
Free feeding, that is having food available at all times, is something that you should discuss with your puppy's breeder. Generally speaking, most puppies, just like human babies, do best with planned regular feeding times.
Coddling puppies by holding the food bowl while the puppy eats or by adding delectable treats after the bowl has been put down can tend to establish poor eating habits. If your puppy is hungry, she will eat. Dogs have a great sense of what they need to survive. No healthy puppy will starve itself.
Some puppies are real "chow hounds." Using a flat shallow pie plate or tin will slow down food gobblers since the food is spread out rather than all mounded in as in a steeper feeding dish. Berners usually have very good appetites.
Many people like to train their dogs to sit prior to receiving a reward, and food is definitely a reward for most Bernese. Training your puppy to sit before a bowl of food is delivered is a great way to get across that following your directions is met with a very pleasant experience.
Resource guarding, meaning dogs that growl when food is removed or when a person comes around while the dog is eating must not be allowed to develop. Start early to train your puppy to be comfortable with having you put your hand in or around her food bowl. Or you can tell the your puppy to sit and take her bowl away mid meal, then praise her and give the bowl back for her to finish. Teaching your puppy about how to react during intrusions while she is eating is especially important if you have children.