Does your dog train better, with more drive, after eating, or after fasting for awhile? I've always thought it was supposed to be the latter, but my pup is the opposite. Sometimes (but not always) when I come home from work I bring out her tug and she is pretty ho-hum about it. Then I feed her, and she goes nuts for her toy. Maybe she's just too hungry to care about playing? I'm just curious to hear what you find with your own dogs.

Scott, I don't know what your breed is, but NO heavy activity for a couple of hours before OR after eating. This is possibly one of the factors with bloat.

Bob is right here.

I have noticed my dogs really WANT to play after eating and you also don't want to run them hard right before eating either. Also same thing with consumption of large quantities of water.

Also, I keep gas-x in my emergency dog kit...just in case....It won't do anything if stomach has flipped but I do understand it can buy you a small amt of time......if anything happens.

But I make the dogs settle for an hour or so after eating and don't do anything intense for 3-4 hours (usually the eat before they settle in for the night with a small amount in the morning).

Thanks for the replies and the concern. I am aware of bloat - I guess I'll clarify my post. I don't feed her a huge bowl of kibble and immediately run her. I don't even feed her kibble at all. On most weekday evenings, I come home at five and we take a short 15-20 minute walk. We return and for 2-3 minutes I do some drive building exercises with her toy. She gets fed around six. I go and do other household stuff for awhile. By 8:00, her energy is usually at it's peak, and we do more training - a short session only. By 8:30-9:00 she wants to settle down and go to sleep. This is just my dog's pattern. What I'm saying is that when hungry she's just not as easy to get into drive, maybe because she's preoccupied with being hungry. It just seems counter to the common wisdom so I was curious if other dogs were like this. I've tried just feeding late into the evening, but then she tends to be whiney and not interested in play. Avoiding activity for several hours before and after eating is impractical. I work all day, so we've got to train at some point!