Border Collie outsmarting slow feeder bowl?

A Border Collie that's cracked the slow feeder — that's not surprising, but it is a problem worth solving properly. Dogs that eat too fast are at real risk of bloat, which can be life-threatening in medium and large breeds, as well as vomiting and ongoing digestive discomfort, and a genuinely well-matched slow feeder can halve eating time. To point you in the right direction: what slow feeder are you using at the moment, roughly how long is your dog taking to finish a meal, and how much are you feeding per sitting?

That's a classic Border Collie move — they figure out the bowl geometry almost immediately and then game it rather than work with it. The tipping trick tells me the base isn't weighted or gripped, and the low ridges are giving him almost nothing to work around. What kibble size is he on — small, medium, or large pieces? That affects which bowl pattern will actually slow him down rather than just shift the problem.

That post-meal vomiting is a direct result of eating speed — worth stopping before it becomes a habit. For a clever, medium-kibble dog, I'd go with the Outward Hound Fun Feeder Slo-Bowl in the Flower pattern. The Flower has deep, narrow channels arranged in a spiral that medium kibble genuinely gets lodged in, rather than sitting on top of ridges he can sweep clean. It also has a non-slip base that resists tipping. Outward Hound's own data shows it slows eating by around ten times for most dogs, and anecdotally it's one of the few that holds Border Collies and Labradors for a meaningful amount of time. It won't take him forever, but you should be looking at three to five minutes rather than thirty seconds.

Border Collies are persistent feeders — hunger usually wins over frustration, especially at meal times rather than treat times. The risk with this breed is more that they become obsessive about solving it than that they give up. If you find after a week or two that he's still finishing too fast, the next step up would be a licki mat used alongside the bowl, which changes the game entirely from extraction to licking and is much harder to rush. But start with the Flower bowl — it's a genuine step up from what you have and should deal with the vomiting straightaway.

Get the large. Border Collies are medium-to-large dogs and the large bowl fits a full 250g meal comfortably without you needing to pile it up, which would defeat the purpose. The small version would mean splitting his meals into multiple refills, which is more hassle than it's worth.