Feeding time vs. leaving food out

[sparklemom]

Sparkle gets a half hour walk every morning and a very vigorous hour-long run through the woods every night. Not that you asked, but you're somehow implying that she sits around all day and she doesn't. Perhaps my terminology is wrong, but I just call that "going for a run", not training or anything. Even though we are always training while on walks, I take the term "training" to mean actually standing out in the back yard or wherever with the dog and teaching her to do a "trick" on command.

[Carina43]

I agree that feeding twice daily is optimal...but my mother has two working Border Collies in Scotland. They have food (a dry oatmeal/dried meat stuff commonly fed to working dogs there) out all day, plus they get an evening meal of raw meat, usually some sort of offal, what she calls "liver and lights." .

These dogs really work - she has several hundred sheep & the dogs are out every day - and are extremely long lived & healthy.
They have never had shots or even gone to a vet, as far as I know - we've talked about the difference in accepted dog care here compared to there. Working dogs are never ever neutered, and shots are not legally required where she lives.

So maybe you can leave a little out for "nibbling" and give her something extra special once or twice a day...? Of course BCs are not prone to bloat, I guess as far as exercise you would have to take that into account.

[sparklemom]

Must be a culture/age thing. My family is Scottish and my father thinks I'm insane for spending so much time and money on my animals. As he says "The dogs ate what we ate and they were fine." :)

[Sasso]

I'm with Jamie, I also feed once a day and thought that was fine. As far as changing a feeding schedule, before we got Harley, my little dog had his food out all the time, although I only gave him a specific amount every day so I could monitor his eating habits.

Well, when we got Harley that came to an end bc Harley would have eaten all of Quila's food too! The first few days Quila wouldn't eat when I put his food out, but by the third day he was eating just fine.:)

[nynewbie]

Ok, I am still learning here, but...When we first got Nash, we free fed her (had one of those auto feeders that is now on the top of the shed). I felt that she was losing weight, so after reading forums, I got a metal bowl and started measuring her food, feeding 2x a day. She ate better, but not all of it. Thanks to what I learned here, I started reading labels. Nutro was about the best I could find around here so I bought a small bag of Nutro Natural Large Breed and put some in a bowl, then put her Pro Plan in another bowl, set both bowls down and watched her. She sniffed both bowls, ignored the Pro Plan and chowed the Nutro down. Needless to say we now feed her Nutro and she has put the weight back on. I couldn't feed her yesterday morning, cuz she had surgery and she was looking at me like "Hey! what's up? Where's my food?" She is doing great on the Nutro, and she likes it.

[rasmy]

I think that if I leave Johnny to free eating he will die while he is eating. He will eat whatever you give to him without stop and with any quantities, I wonder are all Rottweilers like this??

Once I had a GSD she was very picky and will only eat cooked meat with vegitables or any other kind of additives!