Feeding a Full grown dog?

Question

This is not a question that I neccessarily need a answer to, what I would like is opinions from people who know what they are talking about. Here it is. I have owned dogs of many breeds all my life, as well as horses. I trained obedience in dogs, and have been int he show ring with the horses. I was a 4-H leader doing both the dog and horse projects.
The way I feed my full grown dogs is 1x a day, in the evening, afetr i come home from work. I have always known that Free choice feeding is wrong, and can cause bad behaviors and accidents as well. I know a couple people that do this, and to me it surely is pure laziness, you should feed at night or whatever time you choose, the dog has so long to eat, and then you pick up the bowl. This prevents accidents and other issues, train them early and thats that. Any opinions?

Answer 1

We recently had a similar discussion with our vet. We have never free-fed our dogs, but we were feeding 1 1/2 cups twice a day. The vet said there are new studies out that show, based on how wild dogs eat, that feeding once a day is optimal and could even cut down on the feed requirements. We gave it a try, and amazingly enough, the dogs actually started to get fat! As a result, they are now fed 2 cups once a day (late afternoon). Nothing else has changed, except that now they are less likely to have to get up in the middle of the night or have accidents because their dinner has already passed through by bedtime.

Answer 2

I train dogs, mostly with behavioral issues and often discourage the free-feeding method and instruct my student on scheduled feeding. I feed my dogs twice a day, morning and evening. I feel it gives a more controlled meal time, less jumping and rough housing if they're not quite so hungry. I can't imagine going 24 hours without anything to eat and don't expect my dogs to.
I do understand that many people feed once a day and that is their choice. Sometimes you simply have to do what your day will allow.
There is always someone home to tend to my dogs during the day but not every family has that option. As long as they're healthy, happy and behaved there is no problem with the single feeding daily. It is whatever they get used to.

Answer 3

I think it depends on the dog. My first dog had her dry food available to her 24 hours a day. She could control it, never had an accident, was never possessive over her food, plus she wasn't a food motivated dog, so there was not any point for me in holding back her food or feeding her just once a day for training or activity reasons.

As for the effort, I don't see that there is a huge difference between feeding a dog once a day, and feeding a dog once a day and wait x number of minutes for the dog to finish eating before taking the food away again. If I was lazy, I would have chosen a less active breed. :)

It would not work for the majority of dogs I know, and it might not work for the next dog either, in fact, I would prefer it if my next dog was more food fixated, then I could have her search for her regular food on the lawn and use meal times to activate her, plus training is a bit easier when you can use treats.

Answer 4

It would probably be better for the dog if they were feed 2x a day. It keeps their metabolism and well as other things healthy. I'd still feed the same amount per day just divide it up into 2 feedings instead of one. Your right to say that it does prevent accidents because they usually go 20 minnutes after they eat. so if you are regulating their feedings you can pretty much be sure of when they need to go to the bathroom.

Answer 5

How you feed an adult dog really depends on your individual schedule/lifestyle and the individual dog.

Free feeding is not necessarily a bad thing. Some dogs can do very well on a free feeding schedule. My friend has two dogs who both do well free-feed. They have dry food available pretty much all day and they get wet food (home-made) in the evening and in the morning. Neither of her dogs will eat just the plain dry kibble if they aren't hungry. My older dog probably would do quite well on a free-feed schedule...unfortunately my cats would not (they would quickly eat what she didn't finish in the morning). My younger dog also probably wouldn't do well on a free-feed schedule...once when my friend was watching him he managed to eat something outrageous like 6-8 cups of dog food in a half hour. Needless to say he was sick shortly thereafter. The problem is, many dogs do not do well free-feed and will eat until they get fat. Another problem with free-feeding is the definition. To me, free feeding doesn't mean ALWAYS having a full bowl of food available to the dog...it simply means not picking up the food if it isn't all eaten in 15-20 minutes. It also doesn't mean not measuring the amount of food your dog is getting (again, my personal definition and not necessarily the generally accepted definition). My friend who free feeds her dogs is always aware of how much food they are eating. It's a system that works well for her, but would never work in my house (and when they stay at my house they don't get free-fed, they eat on my dog's feeding schedule).

Personally, for most dogs I like feeding twice daily. It works well for me. I agree that I wouldn't want to go 24 hours between meals and that does play a part of it. But also, my dogs probably wouldn't eat an entire day's worth of food in one meal (sometimes they don't eat all of their food at a meal) and I do have problems keeping weight on them sometimes. In addition to working well for me on a daily basis, it really comes in handy when my dogs have to be on antibiotics (which have a tendency to cause nausea if given on an empty stomach) since most of them are a twice daily dose.

I personally don't like feeding only once daily, but I do know that it works very well for many people. That's great for them. Personally I would be concerned about my dogs not eating enough, eating too quickly, or bloating.

Answer 6

I have 3 adult dogs. They are fed once a day. They are 3 different sizes, so they each get a different amount. I feed slightly less than the amount recommended for their weight per day. The big one (72 lbs.) gets 3 1/2 cups The medium one (41 lbs.) gets 1 3/4 cups The smallest (26 lbs.) gets 1 1/4 cups

Answer 7

You should feed your full grown dog twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. I also would suggest that since you only feed your dog once a day, you should probably leave food and water in their cage so if they are really hungry, they have something to eat. Keeping water in their cage is also a good idea if it is really hot the dogs fur will make it seem hotter, so they need water to cool them down.

Answer 8

I have also been a dog owner for many years, and yes, I am guilty of free feeding in the past. I had to learn my lesson the hard way, by making my poor sheltie very overweight and having my vet yell at me for it. I took his advice and put all my dogs on structured feeding, two specific times during the day, once in the am and once in the pm. I was rewarded by a very svelt sheltie who has great energy at 10 years old. All of my dogs are very fit and healthy now and thank god I have a vet who cares!

Answer 9

First off, not big on the free choice feeding idea. Dogs thrive on structure and balance, and they are not able to "self regulate" their food intake if left to feed freely. Feeding depends alot on your lifestyle as well as the breed and if your dog plays a role outside of being a family pet ( police dog, protection dog, guard dog, rescue/therapy dog). For guard dogs or protection dogs, most dog trainers will actually advise to feed an ADULT dog once a day, usually in the morning to early afternoon. Supplementing with treats into the evening. The idea behind this is that a dog with a full belly at night is going to sleep much more sound and deep then a dog with a 1/3 half belly. This is thought to make the dog at night much more "alert" and aware of anything going on. I did this with my GSD, who was a personal protection dog and he was great, never had problems.

It's really an individual choice on how to feed. A word of caution though, with the recent food recalls, make sure to look into grain free brands of food for dogs and to follow the guidelines on amounts to feed carefully. There are some safer foods on the market like Innova Evo and The Honest Kitchen. You may have to spend a bit more for them, but what you spend on this food will def pay off with less vet bills for allergies and skin/coat problems.

Dogs need structure and thrive on a solid understanding of what is expected of them in the household. They are pack animals and do better when they understand CLEARLY their role and place in the pack. Free choice feeding does nothing but confuse a dog, and can also lead to increased problems such as bloat and insulin resistance (pre-diabetes).

If you are too lazy to take proper steps to feeding your dog correctly, then maybe you should consider gold fish instead.

A dog is a committment, one to be taken seriously. If you trained obedience like you said in your post, I find it hard to believe that you don't have some resources like trainers and breeders of your type of dogs to ask about this.

Good luck to you and your dog!

Answer 10

In my personal opinion I take a normal feeding and divide it in half. I feed half in the morning and half in the evenings.

My reasoning behind this is that I would not like to go for 24 hours without eating. 12 hour intervals seems to be better.

Like I said, it is just My point of view. My dogs seem to do better on this schedule.