I took this photo of Horace scattering his food three years ago – and he still does it! I took the photo below yesterday.
But now we’ve learned to put a tray under his food, but when he’s in full-on scatter mode, he manages to fling his food far and wide.
I don’t know why he does it – but he always has and I think this was one of the things that started ringing warning bells in the early days that everything wasn’t quite right with him. In fact, we actually went to the vet with him when he was a puppy as we were worried about his eating.
It does make feeding him quite a long job! I used to feed him by hand, but then we felt if we could get him to eat independently that would be better. So it’s now a case of giving him his food, letting him scatter it, pick it up and let him scatter it some more and then he either goes back to bed or starts eating!
He takes a long time eating too – as he has problems chewing. But he knows the food he has and when I’ve tried him with soft food, he doesn’t know what it is and ignores it, so we keep him on his the dried dog food. The whole process of Horace eating a meal can take a couple of hours depending on whether he tries to eat or not!
And here’s Horace after a busy scatter session heading back under his duvet. Despite all of his problems, he’s very easy to settle down – as long as he has a duvet to snuggle up under he’s quite happy anywhere.
And here’s a visitor I had to my workshop!