Quote: katie o'connor

 Quote: connie sutherland

One sorts it all out in a two-foot radius before he even starts.

That sounds as if it would be quite comical to watch Connie.

I feed my dog on a small (6'x6') tarp. Similar to a "place" command she has learned that is where she eats regardless of inside/outside or when we are away from home. It took a little repetition and reinforcement at first but she learned quickly to associate it with eating.

Katie

That's what I do with the buffet guy -- put his dish on the middle of a piece of old plastic tarp. I policed him for a while when he was first here, but he stays on the tarp now.

We started feeding raw 4 months ago. My Westie eats on the spot, but my GSD likes to spread her food around.

We feed them in the dining area, which has wooden floor, and we mop the floor with a Swiffer WetJet afterwards.

We got our GSD, San San, when she was 2 years old, and when we first started feeding raw, she would try to bring larger pieces of meat into her crate (which is in our bedroom). So we put up a door to keep the dogs in the dining area when they were eating.

I think as San San became more comfortable with us and realized no one was going to take her food, she now does not try to bring her food into the crate anymore.

I do wipe the dogs front paws with disinfecting wipes if I saw them touching raw food with their paws.

I feed my two dogs inside and having carpet training is key. I never liked the idea of a plastic tarp or shower curtain so I used old towels. Depending on the thickness I would double them up. The dogs are trained that that is the only appropriate eating area. As puppies if they were to start pulling food off the towel I would stop them and place the food back in the center of the towel and give them a command for it. At this point if the dogs were to start to pull a piece of food off the towel (some items are big and they can get into it) I say on the towel and they bring it back toward the center.
The dogs eat on there respective towels and will lick them clean to an extent. The top towel is usually swapped out about every two weeks. I have a few old towels so I wait until there is a load of laundry and wash them all on hot with a mild detergent or borax and dry them on high with no fabric softner. The dogs do a good enough job licking them clean so even when I wash them there is no smell unless some fish was fed. If the dog are fed outside they will still eat within the space of an imaginary towel.

When I take care of my parents Newfoundland I feed it raw and taught him to eat within a controlled area as well. Although he was fed outside he still wanted to wonder off with pieces. When I started he didn't know how to eat any RMB's and would even try to bury it if you let him wonder off. The dog would walk around with a chicken 1/4 in his mouth and whine because he didn't know what to do with it. Now he will eat in one area, and doesn't have a problem with RMB's any more.

My dog stays on the (tiled) kitchen floor when he eats and has not yet figured out that he can use his paws to help him hold the RMBs. I've caught him once trying to carry his food onto the carpet, but because I watch him as he eats I could stop him before he got there. He does a pretty good job licking up any juice or meaty bits that fall on the floor. Afterwards I just spray some disinfectant on the floor and wipe it up.

Granted, when I end up feeding something really smelly or otherwise messy (green tripe and whole animals come to mind), he will be eating that outside; we've just started though so I haven't quite gotten to the "good stuff" yet. =D

When I started the Boxer on raw, she would drag everything over to the carpet to eat. I began crating her, and she learned to eat where she was, not drag it all over the house to settle in and eat.
When I got Ivan, I had a heck of a time getting him to eat. It really took a LONG time (relatively, but he was so underweight that he didn't HAVE much time to refuse) Once he was eating, he went into the crate to eat. It seemed to teach him to keep the mess from spreading to everywhere, and also seemed to keep him from getting possessive about the food, because there was no chance anyone could get near it.
Sometimes I will feed them outside of their crates, but not a lot. Usually they get fed outside the crates when we are not at home. I try to vary it a little every once in a while to keep them comfortable with alternate ways of being fed, just in case there is a different situation.
For me, it almost seemed like starting in the crate helped to keep the mess down while the dog developed their eating style, and helped to develop a more or less "neat" eater.

teagan and neb eat in their crates, so that includes raw. i'm lucky to be carpetless (asmatic cat), since luc does sometimes carry his food, especially big stuff. i just follow him around (i like to supervise any eating of bones) and point out any bits he dropped and he cleans it up.

This thread has made me smile . Some are very conscientious and even wipe paws, some wipe out the crate once every few days. Some feed in bowel, on tarps, in the yard, on towels… It is enough to be sure that you can feed in whatever way fits your life style.

For the record, my male eats in his crate, and will carry his frozen food from the kitchen to his crate, nose open the door, and eat in there. My female eats in the kitchen at her bowl and is very neat and tidy. The cats eat in the laundry room with the door shut so that no mean dogs come and steal their food. After everyone is done, they ALL switch spots to see if anyone left anything behind.

The crate is wiped out weekly with a disinfectant wipe. The food bowl in the kitchen goes in the dish washer in the evening, and the floor of the laundry room is wiped with a wet Swiffer weekly.

Some of your posts already have me shaking my head and laughing-I can imagine my husband's face when i tell him to ignore the bloody tarp in the middle of the kitchen. Thank you all. I will have a chance to see his eating habits while we roam around together for a few days before i bring him home, so maybe that will help me plan a strategy.

Wanted to add something here on clean-up (once I stopped laughing!)
I wipe down the area after everyone is done, no matter where they eat. Salmonella is no joke, and I really don't feel like getting sick.
I use the Clorox wipes out of convenience, but you can also MAKE them yourself for less money. Lysol and Clorox sell concentrated bottles of disinfectant. If you get one of those bottles, and a roll of paper towels, cut the paper towel roll in half, take out the cardboard piece, then put the half roll of towels in the empty container of clorox wipes or some appropriate sized airtight container, add the concentrate and water mix, close it up, and there you go... homemade wipes at half the cost.

That could work as a money-saver.

I sure used to use them, in big three-packs from Costco.

Now I worry about those wipes, though, thinking that they are very similar to overuse of antibiotics: They wipe out most of the bacteria and leave an empty playing field for the resistant ones.

I don't use them since I heard some MD on TV say that he thought of them as "like sprinkling antibiotics around my house."

Maybe he was wrong. But I'd like to find other ideas.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Germs/Story?id=4989093&page=2