Everyone is obsessed with what's in the bowl.
Grain-free, raw, large breed, prescription, fresh, freeze-dried.
Even a child knows nutrition matters.
But did you know how a Great Dane eats matters as much — or more — than what he eats?
Let me explain.
When a deep-chested dog gulps food at high speed, two things happen at once.
First, a large volume of food enters the stomach in a single bolus — distending it rapidly.
Second — and this is the part most owners have never been told — enormous amounts of air get swallowed alongside the food.
That air collects at the top of the stomach.
In a deep-chested breed like a Great Dane, that air-filled, distended stomach hangs from the spine like a pendulum.
When the dog moves — even just walks across the kitchen — that pendulum can rotate.
If it rotates 180 degrees or more, the stomach twists shut at both ends.
Gas can't escape. Blood supply gets cut off. Tissue starts to die in minutes.
That is GDV — Gastric Dilatation-Volvulus. The condition Dane owners simply call "bloat."