Why Does My Dog Move His Food from the Bowl to the Floor Before Eating?

If your dog is one of the many dogs with seemingly strange eating habits, you’ve probably seen him do this. He takes a mouthful of food from the bowl, moves it to a different location on the floor (sometimes in a completely different room), eats the pile of food from the floor, and then returns to the food bowl and repeats.

This behavior is due to dogs’ evolution from wild pack animals. Before domestication, dogs always had to be on guard, especially while eating. When your dog moves his food from the bowl to another spot, this new spot is one he considers safe. He might not trust his food bowl, or he might not trust the way it’s positioned in the room. If the food-moving habit bothers you, you can experiment with positioning it differently, buying a new food bowl, or simply training him to trust the one he already has.