# How do I teach my dog to stop spilling her food bowl?



## Ben_From_Texas

My girl Abby likes to paw her food from the bowl and eat it off the floor. She does this even with a raised food bowl. Sometimes she dumps her water out too. How can I go about fixing this?


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## JakodaCD OA

glue her bowl to the floor? LOL just kidding of course, sorry no suggestions from me


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## Stosh

I feed Stosh in a pie plate so there's no tipping the bowl over. Some people use a cookie sheet, it makes them slow down their eating and it's less messy


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## MaggieRoseLee

Stosh said:


> I feed Stosh in a pie plate so there's no tipping the bowl over. Some people use a cookie sheet, it makes them slow down their eating and it's less messy


That's a great idea. 

I agree with going a 'management' route with this. Either big, heavy low bowls or something like a pie plate. Wonder if gardening stores have pots that would be heavy and work...


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## dogfaeries

Sage deliberately tips hers over any chance she gets. It helps to use the stainless steel bowls that have a wide base and a smaller top, like these.


Ah, I just reread your post. Does your dog DIG the water and the food out of the bowls? I have NO idea how to fix that, LOL. Sorry!


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## Ben_From_Texas

dogfaeries said:


> Sage deliberately tips hers over any chance she gets. It helps to use the stainless steel bowls that have a wide base and a smaller top, like these.
> 
> 
> Ah, I just reread your post. Does your dog DIG the water and the food out of the bowls? I have NO idea how to fix that, LOL. Sorry!


I have some bowls like the ones you showed, and yes she will dig the food out of those or find ways to tip them over. She's very persistent about eating off the floor.


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## Stosh

Stosh wasn't a great eater as a pup so the vet suggested the flat surface like a plate or cookie sheet where he could investigate without putting his face down into a bowl.


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## doggiedad

my dog use to tip his water bowl. i finally figured out that
i should let him drink some water and then take the bowl
away. he stopped doing it. i don't know if i trained
him to stop or he just grew out of it.


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## RogueRed26

Same here. My girl does this with her food and especially the water bowl. For food, I simply serve it and take it away in 10 to 15 minutes. If she spills it ahead of that time, I simply pick it up and she gets to skip that meal. So far, she eats her food without spilling, but every once in a while she won't eat it all so I pick it up. 

The water bowl is another story. She spills her water every time. What I do is not fill it up. If she spills it, then I don't refill it for a while.

What our dogs need to learn is that this behavior will not get them attention, nor will they a refill or change of kibble if they do so. Nilf needs to be practiced diligently.


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## CarrieJ

Alice used to do the flip the bowl over; it drove me nuts.
I got a shorter sided very heavy ceramic bowl that she couldn't flip over. I also wouldn't pick up the food. She still had ten minutes to eat, whether it was all over the floor or in her bowl. After the time allotment, I would pick it up but not replace it.

That heavy bowl lasted for about a year and a half until she was for some unfathomable reason tossing a primal bone around and it landed just right and split the bowl. She has a giant "Jethro" stainless bowl now and doesn't flip it. It think it was age that helped out there.

The water bowl outside was a swimming pool....*sigh* 
I would go outside with her and right as she was lifting the paw to start the water festivities I'd say "OUT" in a firm voice.
I didn't want to correct her for drinking, just digging and flipping.
When she drank like a "big girl" I would praise her in happier voice.

We also got her a kiddie pool so that really cut down on the playing in the water dish.

When she was a puppy/infant, we controlled how much water she got; to work on the potty training. (picked it up and put it down, etc) It was after potty training that the games began.


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## The Packman

Elly May just started doing this all of the sudden...I wish I knew why.


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## Sue Smart

Kayleigh takes a mouthful of kibble and eats it away from her bowl.


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## PaddyD

Sue Smart said:


> Kayleigh takes a mouthful of kibble and eats it away from her bowl.


My dog does the same. Since the food is kibble and since she cleans it up, I don't have a problem with the kibble on the floor. Sometimes when she is eating too fast for my liking I will take most of it out of the bowl and spread it on the floor (because I am too lazy to get a cookie sheet).
As for water, she tipped the bowl a few times as a pup but we were there to say *NO* and that worked. 

Good luck!!


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## dadogsyard

*Tricks i Tried*

I love Dogs because They are most loyal animal on the earth but sometimes they behave rude and show there stubbornness, mostly my dogs show there anger on food bowl. when i feed them they will flip food bowl and because of that food is wasted so much and messed around in home. i was searching for solution and i found one. i bought Bamboo silicon bowl from dadogsyard.com/search?q=bowl. my dogs now can't flip that and i got solution.:grin2:


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## Jeanne Grunert

Zeke did this as a puppy, too. We fed him in his crate so if he tipped the bowl over the food was contained. We took away the water bowl and went with a refilling tower; it was too heavy for him to tip, and now he has both, and alternative where he wants to drink. My friend who is a vet tech suggested finding a heavier water bowl that was tapered so the bottom was wider than the top and that would make it harder to tip. It did and now he's okay, rarely tips his food and hasn't tipped his water in a while. He's 4 1/2 months old now.

What's funny is that he never tipped over his water bowl in the outside area we have for him to play. And that's an old mixing bowl made of lightweight metal that he could easily tip, but somehow, it was more fun for him to tip the water over in the kitchen where I'd rush in and yell at him!


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## middleofnowhere

On the food - why not let her eat off the floor? I've had a dog or two that would bring a mouthful to wherever I was, drop it on the floor and eat. And repeat. Currently, my older dog likes to have an appetizer on the floor ... OK I'm not going to argue on that one.  



For the water, try a chum bowl or buddy bowl. One of these is a 3 part stainless, the other is hard plastic. The hard plastic one can be tipped upside down and not spill. It's hard to take apart with arthritic hands 'though. The stainless steel ones didn't work for my current duo but a Neater Feeder did so far as water goes. A slow feeder might also work with your dog's propensity to eat off the floor.


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## Sunflowers

What is it with all the zombie resurrections of threads lately? This one is from 2011


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## Dunkirk

Sunflowers said:


> What is it with all the zombie resurrections of threads lately? This one is from 2011



It's new members looking at old threads, and commenting on them.


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## middleofnowhere

And some old members (who? me???) being unobservant enough to comment...


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## Aly

Put a clean, large and _very heavy_ rock in the bottom of a low-sided bowl. Pour fresh water (or fresh food) around the rock. Works with messy horses too.


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## car2ner

Sunflowers said:


> What is it with all the zombie resurrections of threads lately? This one is from 2011


zombie threads, I like this. I almost wish we had more of those since new threads often cover things we've discussed many times before. 

My dogs water bowl is a large tip resistant stainless steel bowl on a tile floor. So far so good. My boy's dinner bowl is a large ceramic pie plate. It is wide and shallow and he still drops bits on the floor so I put a mat under it. My gal-dog's bowl is in a crate, mostly so she won't worry about my boy coming over and requesting part of her meal. So anything she spills she simply cleans up from the crate floor. My biggest mess is actually on the wall, where my big-boy's food bowl bumps up against the base boards. I guess putting the bowl in a raised stand would fix that but I just give the wall a wipe down instead.


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## Sabis mom

I use cheapy plastic boot trays under the dishes. Get them from any dollar store or Walmart. If the dogs spill, tip or dribble it's all contained. Wide base bowls with rubber around the base stop most issues, but I actually have had dogs that were not allowed unsupervised water in the house.

I worked with a horse that used to dump her grain and eat it off the ground. Her owner wanted it stopped so we stopped it. She got colic the first night. She needed to eat from the ground in a natural position. We switched her to a pan on the ground and she stopped dumping her grain.
Sometimes there is a reason for the things animals do. 

Zombie threads are awesome. Sometimes they bring up topics we have not discussed in years!


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## Nscullin

Sabis mom said:


> I use cheapy plastic boot trays under the dishes. Get them from any dollar store or Walmart. If the dogs spill, tip or dribble it's all contained. Wide base bowls with rubber around the base stop most issues, but I actually have had dogs that were not allowed unsupervised water in the house.
> 
> 
> 
> I worked with a horse that used to dump her grain and eat it off the ground. Her owner wanted it stopped so we stopped it. She got colic the first night. She needed to eat from the ground in a natural position. We switched her to a pan on the ground and she stopped dumping her grain.
> 
> Sometimes there is a reason for the things animals do.
> 
> 
> 
> Zombie threads are awesome. Sometimes they bring up topics we have not discussed in years!




I buy the boot trays too. Mine from Lowe’s 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## cvamoca

Aly said:


> Put a clean, large and _very heavy_ rock in the bottom of a low-sided bowl. Pour fresh water (or fresh food) around the rock. Works with messy horses too.



And chickens. I use rubber horse pans to feed the chickens, geese (and horse), but the big boys jumping down often spill the feed so each pan has a nice sized rock in the bottom.


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