Dog Bowls

Stainless steel is the default for good reason: it does not hold smells, it goes in the dishwasher, and a determined chewer cannot destroy it. Its one weakness is weight, so a steel bowl for an enthusiastic eater usually wants a rubber ring or a weighted holder to stop it travelling across the floor.

Ceramic, like the Mason Cash bowls, solves the sliding problem with sheer mass and is easy to keep clean, at the cost of being breakable on a tiled floor. Melamine and plastic are light and cheap, which suits travel and puppies, but plastic scratches, and scratches hold bacteria and are associated with chin acne in some dogs. If you use plastic, replace it when the surface is no longer smooth.

A dog that finishes dinner in twenty seconds swallows a lot of air with it, and in deep-chested breeds fast eating is one of the risk factors discussed around bloat. A slow feeder bowl moulds ridges and channels into the base so the same food takes several minutes to work out, which is the cheapest intervention available for the problem.

A lick mat, like the LickiMat range, goes further and turns a wet meal or a spoon of something into ten minutes of licking, which is genuinely calming for a lot of dogs and useful before a vet visit or during a bath. Neither is a replacement for a meal plan if a dog is overweight, but both change the pace of eating, which is usually what the owner is actually worried about.

A raised stand brings the bowl to a comfortable height and takes the stoop out of every meal, which visibly helps a tall dog, an older dog with a stiff neck or a dog with a spinal or joint problem. For those dogs it is a small change that makes a daily difference.

They are not a universal upgrade. Raised feeding has been studied in connection with bloat in large, deep-chested breeds, and the evidence is genuinely mixed rather than settled either way, so it is worth a word with your vet if you own a breed where bloat is a concern. For a small or medium dog with no mobility problem, height is a preference rather than a benefit.

Water should be down all the time, in a bowl big enough that it does not run out between top-ups and heavy enough that it does not get knocked over. In a house over more than one floor, a second water bowl upstairs is a small kindness to an older dog and costs almost nothing.

Wash bowls daily. A water bowl builds a slimy film within a day or two, which is biofilm rather than dirt and comes off with a scrub rather than a rinse, and a food bowl left between meals is the most-used unwashed thing in most kitchens. Two bowls of each in rotation makes that easy.