How much will a dog eat ?

Just how much will your average dog eat before he finally admits that he's eaten too much already ?

People, meet Jake (left).

He is a Golden Retriever and he lives with us and has done since he was a twelve week old puppy, he's now nearly 8 years old. He doesn't like plastic carrier bags, gunshots, vacumn cleaners, going for walks, barking, guard dog duties, dog toys that squeak or infact any sort of dog toy, or those large green cable TV junction boxes that stand and hum at the end of every street around here - I don't mean that they smell, I mean that they hum gently in the background, Jake doesn't like the tune they're humming.

He does like mealtime and sleeping and he likes being the centre of attention.

He has barked maybe five times since he came to live with us and each time that he has barked he scares the life out of me, I think he scares himself too because the last time he barked was at a magpie in the garden and he ran straight back inside with a daft look on his face as if to say "did you hear that, I did the woof thing again". The magpie sat on the shed and pissed himself laughing.

We bought him from a genuine gamekeeper way up in the genuine Yorkshire Dales who lived on a genuine country estate, Jakes pedigree reads like a "who's who" of famous gundogs, it lists eight generations of gundog champions and both his parents were working Retrievers, the gamekeeper let Jake out into a field behind his house when we went to collect him and as he ran through the head-high (to him) grass he pointed out how he was stopping to sniff the air every few seconds, "its in his breeding see" he explained, "our Labradors sniff the soil, Retrievers are air scenters, he'd make a good gun dog him, but he's shit scared of guns"

And that had sealed Jakes fate, all his brothers and sisters were already being trained to fetch dead birds back to their masters, Jake had run away and hid back in his kennel when they fired a shotgun near him, even now on a Sunday he won't go outside because a farm two miles away holds clay pigeon shoots and he can hear the faint popping of the guns.

And so he came to live with us, he comes to work with me and sleeps under my desk all day and when we come home he sleeps all evening in front of the fire, then I let him out into the garden late on and he has a piss and a shit and then comes in and sleeps all night at the bottom of the stairs, its a tough life but its in his breeding see.

We had a burglar come and kick the kitchen door down last December, came in at one in the morning and stole my wallet and mobile phone, Jake was sleeping in the kitchen that night, I heard the door being kicked down and came straight downstairs to find the burglar gone and Jake standing at the back door looking out, he turned to me and looked with a "what the fuck was that" expression and when the police came he let them fuss over him then looked sheepish again when they asked if he'd barked at all.

Anyhow, to the eating question.

He's been staying at home recently instead of coming to the office, well it saves him having to wake up for a few minutes to get in the car, and when Jodie gets in from school at 3.30pm she usually feeds him his two scoops per day of Pedigree Complete Meal.

Two scoops is all he's supposed to have, it says so on the bag, two scoops for lazy Retrievers, all the nourishment they need it says, don't feed them more than two scoops though because they'll get to be fat bastard dogs it says on the bag, so we only feed him two scoops.

Except that I didn't know that Jodie has been feeding him as well as part of my routine is to feed him, so I come in at 6pm and I feed him two scoops as well, and this has been going on for a month or more now.

So tonight before I fed him I asked him if he'd been fed already, he just sat and stared at me waiting for a word he recognised in that way that all dogs do, they only understand a few words of human and yet they look at us so intently as though they are hanging onto every word you are saying.

I mentioned the magic word "dinner" and his eyebrows shot up and his tail started involuntary wagging, I asked again if he'd already had his dinner and he got more excited, I gave him his dinner and he wolfed at it as though it was yesterday since he'd last been fed, which it should have been.

Then Jodie walked in and said she'd already fed him and he just looked up with a big smug smile, no wonder he's piled the beef on since I stopped taking him to work with me.

So how much do you think a dog would eat before he stopped and said he'd had enough ?

I reckon that if you dropped Jakes 15kg bag (nearly a months supply) of Pedigree Complete Meal on the floor and it split open then he'd eat all of it without stopping, it'd take him maybe half an hour to eat it all but I reckon he would, and if you dropped another bag on the floor two hours later I reckon he'd have a good go at that as well.

Its in his breeding, as long as it didn't make a bang when you dropped it.