A Heated Dog Bowl?

With Brisbane's current need to eat squishy food, and his sometimes finicky appetite, I've been saving a lot of uneaten meals for later. He's mostly eating Honest Kitchen food with a bunch of yogurt mixed in for probiotics. Whatever he doesn't eat gets covered and put in the fridge for later, but Briz has decided he would rather not eat cold Honest Kitchen.

This leaves me with the question of how to warm his food up to an appetizing temperature without killing the good bacteria he needs to counteract all the antibiotics he's been getting. I don't want to microwave it and end up killing most of the probiotics while heating the food unevenly. I just needed a way to gently warm it.

Among other delightful antiques and knick knacks, my mother owns a vintage baby food warming dish. Years ago, she showed me how the cork in the rim could be removed, and warm water poured inside the hollow ceramic dish. This keeps the bowl and therefore the food at a pleasant temperature, and prevents it from getting cold while someone eats at the speed of baby. Sadly, my mother was unwilling to loan me her baby bowl for Brisbane.

Fortunately, I found one at a thrift store the same day it occurred to me to use a baby food warmer for dog food. While a slightly different model, this one works on the exact same principle as my mother's dish, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing when I spotted it in the pet bin at the thrift store. It even has its little decorative cork!

I'm pleased to say this does a perfect job of heating up leftover dog food from the fridge and keeping it at a nice temperature for a while. I've been putting rather hot water in it because the cold food cools the dish down, so everything ends up pleasantly warm.