Many people free-feed their dogs, which is the practice of keeping a dog’s bowl full and letting him eat whenever he wants. Although this may seem like an easy approach to feeding, free-feeding isn’t a good idea, for many reasons:
• Dogs who are free-fed are more likely to be overweight. This may not have been true in the past, but with today’s highly palatable foods, your dog will enjoy eating long past the point at which she’s full. She will likely take in more calories than she needs and carry the fat to prove it.
• You can’t tell exactly how much your dog is eating. In fact, you may not recognize that your dog is ill until you suddenly notice you haven’t been adding much food to her bowl in the past few days. Food intake is one of the best indicators of health, so you should always be in a position to monitor your dog’s intake accurately.
• Medicating dogs who are free-fed is more difficult. If you have to give your dog pills, such as heartworm preventive, and your dog is free-fed, you will have to make sure that you pop it down her throat and she swallows it. However, if she gets fed two square meals a day, you can just add the pill to her food and it will go right down the hatch!
• Free-feeding is difficult in multidog households. Frequently, one dog hogs the food and gains weight, while the other dog is deprived of the food and loses weight. Plus, free-feeding is impossible if your dogs require different kinds of food.
So how many times a day should you feed your dog? Feed puppies four times a day until they are 3 months of age, when you can move them to feedings three times a day. At 6 months of age, dogs can be fed twice a day, and this is probably the best feeding schedule for a dog to stay on for life. Some dogs are fed just once a day and get along fine. Occasionally, however, dogs who are fed once a day vomit a little fluid or bile 12 to 18 hours after their last meal. If they are fed twice a day, this problem goes away.
No two dogs are exactly the same. They have different metabolic rates, they have different metabolisms, and they may need to eat different diets. If you have more than one dog, it may be more convenient to feed all your dogs the same food, but make sure that you monitor each dog’s response to the diet you are feeding and change the food if an individual dog needs it.
Give your dog a quiet place to eat. If other dogs live in the house, don’t feed them from the same bowl. Feed them at a distance from each other so they don’t feel threatened that the other dog will steal their food. The best solution is to feed your dog in a crate so she can enjoy his meal in the privacy of her den. When you put the bowl down, give your dog 15 minutes to eat. If she hasn’t finished in that time, either you are feeding her too much or she isn’t motivated to eat. By removing the bowl, you can be assured that she will be much more motivated to eat at the next meal. Don’t be held hostage by a picky dog. If you try to encourage her to eat by talking nicely to her and giving her delectable treats, she will soon up the ante, demanding better and better treats until she’s not consuming her dog food at all.
Many veterinary nutritionists believe that we should be rotating our dogs’ diets — feeding them one food for three to six months, and then switching to another diet. They theorize that abnormal proteins may be formed during the processing of food or that individual foods may have undetectable deficiencies or small differences in the availability of certain nutrients. By rotating your dog to a new food every three to six months, you prevent too much exposure to the abnormality in any given food.
People food is okay in small amounts
Giving your dog fresh vegetables and even some fresh fruit on a regular basis is a good idea. Wolves (from which our dogs are descended) eat the greens and grains from their prey’s stomach, and also eat grasses and berries at times. Dogs enjoy fresh vegetables and benefit from the vitamins and fiber they provide. The only vegetable to stay away from is raw onions (some say cooked onions are fine, but some say they aren’t).
Feed your dog the leftovers from your preparations for dinner, in addition to other vegetables, especially the meats and vegetables. That way. both you and your dog benefit. Just make sure that vegetables aren’t the major component of your dog’s food.
If you give the vegetables in large pieces, they provide mostly fiber because dogs don’t have the enzymes to digest cellulose, the major component of the cell walls of plants. However, if you put the vegetables through a juicer or a super-blender that breaks down the cell walls and turns the vegetables to mush, your dog will also benefit from the nutritional content of the vegetable.