A Great Debate on Elevated Dog Bowls

While the topic sounds simple enough, looking at the benefits or drawbacks of using an elevated feeding dish for your dog, there does seem to be rather differing, in fact quite opposite, views on the idea. In spending over three hours of researching this topic, I have found sellers proclaiming that elevated dog bowls are very important for the larger breed of dogs, especially those that are prone to arthritis. They further state that when using raised dog dishes from when the animal is a puppy, there is a greater chance that many back and neck problems, as well as other non-specified related health issues that occur later in life, may be prevented.

While this all seems to make sense, and I was prepared to give a ‘thumbs up’ to the use of elevated dog bowls, another article caught my eye. In it, a veterinarian was asked about the risk of elevated dog bowls causing bloating in a dog. The vet couldn’t really answer the question, due to the lack of real studies, but seemed to feel that larger breeds of dogs are more likely to bloat when eating from an elevated dog dish. Further research brought up a study done by Purdue University, which looked at risk factors associated with Canine Gastric Dilatation-Volvulus (bloating), and their findings were that using a raised feed bowl actually increased the risk of bloating, when the purpose of using such a dish is to reduce the risk.

Since both the veterinarian and the university study suggest that elevated feed bowls increase the chance of bloating for large dogs, I would recommend that anyone thinking of purchasing such an item for their pet, please think twice about it.